
Copyrigi 



CDFXRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




WILLIA^I STANTON, IN IQOO 



A MEMOIR OF 
WILLIAM A. STANTON, S.J. 



BY 

WILLIAM T. KANE, S.J. 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

THE MOST REVEREND J. J. HARTY, D.D. 

Archbishop of Omaha 



B. HERDER BOOK CO. 

17 South Broadway, St. Louis, Mo. 

AND 

68 Great Russell St. London, W. C. 
1918 



IMPRIMI POTEST 

A. J. Burr owes J 5.7. 
Praep. Prov. 

NIHIL OBSTAT 
Sti. Ludovici, die 7. Jan. igi8 

F. G. Holweck, 

Censor Librorum 

IMPRIMATUR 
SH. Ludovici, die 12, Jan. IQ18 

^Joannes J. Glennon, 
Archiepiscopus 

Sti. Ludovici 

Ce'pyright, igi8 

by 

Joseph Guntmersbach 

All rights reserved 

Printed in U. S. A. 

APR 15 I9i8 



2^01.441)2946 






^ 



TO 
MARY REGINA DIMICK 

TO WHOM IN EVERY WAY 

IT OWES MOST 

THIS MEMOIR 

IS AFFECTIONATELY 

DEDICATED 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

When we take up a work of biography to 
read, we find, ordinarily, that it is the story of a 
man whose name at least we have known before. 
The title page is vaguely reminiscent. The man's 
name brings up sketchy memories. He figured 
largely in such and such a war; he wrote such 
and such books; he was a statesman of such and 
such a period of history, or a poet, or a notable 
rascal, or the brewer of a noble beer, or a suc- 
cessful usurer who held a high place in the coun- 
cils of government; possibly (and most vaguely 
of all to us) he was a saint. But he comes be- 
fore us in the book with some credentials of his- 
tory, with a letter of introduction which he himself 
wrote upon the fading tablets of time. We set our- 
selves to read with a sense of being about to enlarge 
upon an acquaintance we have already made. We 
are keeping the convention of polite society in not 
venturing beyond the circle of the properly intro- 
duced. 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

Heaven defend us from decrying that convention, 
whether in life or in books. No doubt it serves a 
good purpose. But heaven defend us more stoutly 
still from becoming its bondmen. He has not 
savoured life fully who has never welcomed an un- 
known comrade in the way, who has never stepped 
out stride for stride with one whose sole known 
credentials were his sonship of Adam and the image 
of God in his soul. The high romance and sweeping 
adventure of life lies not alone on strange moun- 
tains or in uncharted seas; it is often upon the road 
before our doors; it is in the faces and hearts of 
unheralded pilgrims who meet up with us on our 
plodding way. 

I remember a man once saying that he considered 
the most delightful avocation in the world to be that 
of an agent of Baedeker^s. He grew quite rhapso- 
dic about it: to wander about this good earth, fer- 
reting out its beauties, noting places of interest, dis- 
covering hidden nooks and corners full of charm 
and nobility and restful hotels with French chefs, 
and bringing all these nice things to the notice of 
grateful travellers. I doubt if he knew much of 
what he was talking about : yet, let us grant, there 
may be something in his idea. But there is an in- 
comparably finer search open to men. For just as 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

in the material world there are secret haunts of 
beauty and delight, so also in the world of men God 
makes fine fellows whom we must hunt out for 
ourselves, who sound no great trumpet in life, who 
will not catch our eye by any civic monument or 
gleaming halo when they are dead, nor have even the 
meagre credit of an advocatus diaholi: but whom it 
is a matter of pride for us to have known and loved. 

Of the number of such was William Stanton, 
whom you, most amiable reader, in all likelihood 
never so much as heard of. But if you read this 
book bravely and persistently, despising all queru- 
lousness of the flesh, I promise you that you shall 
at least know something of him; and I hope that 
even under the poverty of my presentation you may 
catch some gleam of his fine gold. 

Father Stanton was a young Jesuit priest. He 
died when he was only forty years old. He had 
done but ten or twelve years of actual work in his 
Jesuit career, and that for the most part away off in 
half-barbaric places where the spot-light does not 
reach. He would have been most hugely amused 
over the notion that any one should make a sort of 
hero of him: and he might have beaten me about 
the head with this book, had it come into his hands. 
Yet for all that, a heroic man he was, and rather 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

particularly (I like to believe) the kind of heroic 
man that our temper of to-day most delights in: a 
man who, with an easy grin and an utter lack of pose 
or self -consciousness, made enormous personal 
sacrifices and underwent constant hardships for a 
great cause ; a great, generous man, with the heart 
of a boy, the physique of an athlete, the intellectual 
gifts of a real scientist, and the faith of a Breton 
peasant woman. He was the sort of man whose 
very existence makes us think better of humanity, 
makes us think better even of ourselves: for with 
all his fineness he was very close to the commonest 
of us. 

It is in the certain confidence that many will be 
glad to know such a man, and in the hope that some 
will be encouraged to imitate him, that I have writ- 
ten this little book. 

I wish to make grateful acknowledgment to the 
relatives and comrades of Fr. Stanton, who, often 
with considerable inconvenience to themselves, have 
generously supplied me with the material for this 
memoir. 



INTRODUCTION 

I had known the subject of this memoir from his 
boyhood. I had known well, back in St. Louis, the 
splendid Catholic families from which he sprung. 
When I came to Manila in 1904, I found Father 
Stanton already a figure of note in the island capi- 
tal. He had the distinction of being the first Amer- 
ican to be ordained a priest in the Philippines under 
the American regime. He had the more enviable 
distinction of holding the high regard and warm 
affection of all who knew him. 

His position as the first American priest ordained 
in Manila gave him a really important influence. In 
the chaotic conditions resulting upon the changed 
relations of Church and State in the Islands, he was 
a visible link between the old and the new ; between 
the spiritual existence that dated back to the coming 
of the Spaniards, three hundred and fifty years be- 
fore, and the new civil rule of the Americans. And 
his beautiful gifts of character enabled him to use 
that influence for an immense good. His services, 



INTRODUCTION 

at a time when the need of them was so great, were 
most valuable. His fine poise of character, his 
smiling, kindly common-sense, smoothed over many 
a difficulty, for his fellow-religious, for Spaniard 
and American and Filipino alike. 

The Jesuit Observatory in Manila had been taken 
over by the new government, and its officials re- 
ceived salaries from the government. But the 
American voucher system puzzled the good Spanish 
padres, and gave them such scruples and fears of 
violating religious poverty that they were on the 
verge of relinquishing their fine work altogether. 
Stanton steadied them, and in his easy, drawling 
way made the situation at least clear enough to get 
them to sign the salary-vouchers and continue with 
their work. 

He was welcomed by the American residents, 
whom he gathered with some others to form an 
English-speaking congregation at the church of La 
Ermita. The soldiers at the barracks idolized him. 
The Filipinos trusted and loved him. Demands 
were made upon him from every quarter, and to 
all he responded cheerfully, generously. He at- 
tended the stricken in the cholera hospitals, he 
rounded up the Catholic soldiers in the neighbouring 
pueblos, he preached to his Americans, soldiers and 



INTRODUCTION 

civilians, instructed converts, looked after the sick 
and dying : and all this in addition to an abundance 
of hard work in the Observatory. 

He became in time quite a famous man in Manila, 
even throughout the Islands. There was nothing at 
all spectacular in his methods or his achievements. 
The charm of the man was in his unselfish, devoted, 
priestly character. He spent himself for others. 
He won men by that which has ever won them, the 
priestly spirit of self-sacrifice. What he did was 
only the common duty that falls to the priest of 
God all the world over : his supreme distinction was 
that he did it most uncommonly well. 

That this spirit ruled his whole life, this memoir 
of Father Stanton shows. I am glad to be able to 
introduce it to its readers. Father Stanton went 
through life swiftly, " a burning and a shining 
light " ; and the gleam of him in his passing still 
lingers in many hearts. May God give us all to be 
more like him. 

^ J. J. Harty. 



WILLIAM STANTON 

CHAPTER I 

The problem of every work of biography, even 
the most unpretentious, is to set the subject of it, 
the man himself, clearly before the reader. What 
the man said and did rs really secondary: the chief 
thing is what he was. Even if the account of him 
be, in point of fact, largely a record of dates and 
events, it is because only through these externals 
can we lay hold upon the substance of him; it is 
because they interpret the man to us, give him to 
us in his setting and place. For the rest, it is a 
question of choice, guided by that main purpose and 
by the decent conventions of life, as to what facts 
and incidents shall be stressed, what touched upon 
lightly, what ignored completely. 

I should like to begin this short memoir after a 
fashion dear to the heart of Stevenson — some- 
thing like this : Stanton went over the side of the 
steamer and down the ladder, tossed his bags into the 



2 WILLIAM STANTON 

open boat bobbing at the ladder's foot, and swung 
out, running before the trade, for the palm- fringed 
coast half a league to the west. 

Thus we might leap plump into the middle of 
things, and follow the man swiftly into that field of 
action where he is most fully made manifest. But 
alas ! in this sort of book the conventions must have 
their say. Let us walk measuredly, lest we offend. 
Of the south seas and of tropic lands, there shall be 
talk hereafter: meanwhile, let us prosily begin at 
the beginning. The reader, however, is fairly 
warned that these first chapters, written merely with 
conscience driving my pen, will be rather extraor- 
dinarily dull. 

William Jerome Stanton, born of American par- 
ents, was remotely of Irish and French descent. 
His father's family hailed from Limerick, Ireland: 
his mother belonged to the old Creole family of the 
Chappes. His father was Thomas Stanton, an 
architect and builder, who was born in Cincinnati, 
Ohio, in 1838, but came as a boy to St. Louis, 
Missouri. His mother was Regina Helen Brawner, 
of Florissant, Missouri. Miss Brawner's parents 
were dead when, in 1865, she married Thomas Stan- 
ton; hence the marriage took place at the home of 
her aunt, Mrs. Spalding, in the little town of Staun- 



CHILDHOOD 3 

ton, Illinois, distant some forty miles from St. 
Louis. After the marriage the Stantons returned 
to St. Louis, to take up their residence there. But 
five years later, Mrs. Stanton, as the time drew near 
for the birth of her first child, went again to Staun- 
ton, where William was bom, on February 28, 1870. 
The similarity between his family name and the 
name of his birth-place is, of course, a mere acci- 
dental coincidence. Two other children were after- 
wards bom to the Stantons : Mary Regina, and John, 
both of whom survive their brother William. 

There is scarcely need to say that the Stantons 
were Catholics, of old Catholic families. William's 
mother, in particular, was an exceptionally earnest 
Catholic, a woman of deep piety, of great generosity 
and sweetness of character. She was not of robust 
health, and much of the care and education of her 
children fell upon her husband's sister, Mrs. Joanna 
Siedekum. William's education, at home and at 
school, was careful and thoroughly Catholic. He 
was sent to school when he was a little over five 
years old ; a preposterously tender age for the rigors 
of school life, some may think; but not uncommon 
amongst Catholics of a generation ago. Of that 
first school there is nothing to be said here, beyond 
the fact that it was attached to the Jesuit church in 



4 WILLIAM STANTON 

St. Louis, that it was conducted by Miss Anna Mc- 
Crea, and that the boy spent six years in it. 

He had not been very vigorous in his early baby- 
hood, but thereafter grew into a healthy, robust, 
lively youngster. He showed even in his years of 
childhood something of the combination, which so 
struck us who knew him in after life, of great physi- 
cal and mental activity with a remarkable evenness 
and natural poise of manner. He was fond of 
games and excelled in them, and was decently obedi- 
ent in all matters except that of swimming. St. 
Louis is built upon limestone, the great beds of rock 
being in many plac-es practically on the surface: 
hence the city abounded in stone-quarries. These, 
when abandoned, promptly filled with water, and 
made excellent, though rather dangerous, swimming 
pools. Young Stanton early made their acquaint- 
ance, and the keenest memories of his school-mates 
are of his daring feats in the cold waters of the old 
quarries. 

In 1 88 1 he entered the Academy of St. Louis 
University, where his father before him had been a 
student. He was a good student, one of the leaders 
of his class, but not extraordinarily brilliant. 
About this time he became also an acolyte at the old 
Saint Francis Xavier Church, and continued to 



CHILDHOOD S 

serve Mass there during the whole of his college 
course. He was a thoroughly good boy : one of his 
friends from boyhood says, " as clean a boy as ever 
I knew." But he was by no means notably pious. 
He had that deep, unostentatious faith, which was 
his heritage of Catholic blood and training, which 
moves into and out of the supernatural atmosphere 
without any fuss or posings or violence or self- 
consciousness, which counts God in its life as nat- 
urally as a man takes the earth and sun and air. 
There was no need to preface this memoir with the 
disclaimer commanded by Pope Urban VUI, for I 
shall nowhere in it call Stanton a saint. If the 
reader do so when he finishes, that is his affair, not 
mine. 

Whatever the custom be in other lands, the hall- 
mark of acceptance amongst American boys is to 
have been dubbed with a nick-name. Stanton, 
whether at his first school or at college, but at some 
early time in his boyhood, was deemed worthy by 
his fellows to be known as " Buck," and " Buck " 
Stanton he continued to be to his friends until he 
died. The name seems to smack of the dare-devil, 
perhaps of the swaggerer and blusterer. Well, 
swaggerer and blusterer Stanton was not; but of 
the dare-devil he had plenty in him. Under a quiet 



6 WILLIAM STANTON 

exterior, adorned with the most companionable and 
dependable smile I have ever known, he had a cool 
and persistent pluck that would face anything; and 
he had a fund of animal spirits which led him into 
many a situation that required some facing. His 
pranks and escapades at college, though innocent 
enough, were sufficient in frequency and unexpected- 
ness to ward off effectually from his teachers and 
prefects all danger of ennui. 

A comrade of school-days tells of a typical inci- 
dent. In the early part of March one year, he and 
Stanton sallied forth for a day in the woods west of 
the city. Their wanderings brought them to a small 
lake, still filmed with the frost of late winter. At 
the edge of the lake a small, rude raft was fastened. 
Of course they loosed the raft, and set out with a 
bit of board to paddle across the little lake. Some 
hundred yards out the unwieldy craft upended and 
pitched Stanton into the water, where he struck out, 
swimming and pushing the raft, till they reached the 
shore. The cold began to stiffen his clothes upon 
him, so they made a little fire and dried their clothes 
at it, whilst they went back into the water for a 
" real swim." Stanton was " laid up for repairs " 
for two weeks after. 

His grit was of the dogged kind that can endure 



CHILDHOOD 7 

as well as venture. The same comrade recalls how 
a bigger boy, in the bullying sort of play that some 
boys indulge in, once twisted and pummelled 
" Buck's " arm until he should cry quits. But there 
was no cry from Stanton; only the steady, un- 
daunted grin with which a real boy masks the inner 
stubborn resolve. 

These things are trifles, but they may show some- 
thing of the quality of the boy. 

A boy's idea of honor does not always square with 
his elders' notions. Many a live, normal boy prac- 
tices at times what grown-ups may call wicked eva- 
sions, but which are to him the mere necessary de- 
fense of his liberties against an invading adult 
world. Chewing gum and smoking cigarettes were 
made taboo to young Stanton : a most iniquitous and 
tyrannical taboo as some boys may believe. Hence 
he was put to casting a handkerchief, veil fashion, 
over his head when he sat at his books at home, in 
order safely to masticate the delectable but forbid- 
den gum. His aunt was violently shocked one day, 
when he was about sixteen years old, to discover 
him, as he went along with a group of college mates, 
smoking a horrid cigarette. When he got home, 
she questioned him, and he owned up frankly to the 
felony. (Lying, you see, is ruled out by the boys' 



8 WILLIAM STANTON 

code. ) And to her upbraiding, he answered with a 
twinkle, " Well, you said never to let you see me 
smoking. And I tried my best not to let you see 
me!" 

Some folk would call that sort of boy dishonor- 
able. Yet the chap who did this would not, on an- 
other occasion, report a boy who stole his theme 
and cheated him of a prize in school. That would 
be caddish in the boys' code. The other, according 
to them, was fair game. And who are we pitiful, 
blundering grown-ups to venture arbitrary rulings 
in the subtile realm of boyhood? We have lost the 
vision which is theirs, and would rashly judge where 
we cannot see. I am not defending his disobedi- 
ence. I am but trying honestly to sketch his defects 
as well as his qualities. Even a crude portrait is 
not done all in white. Yet, defects and all, any boy 
who knew " Buck " Stanton well would have sworn 
to his absolute honesty and honorableness. Let us 
take their word for it : they know. 

And in the boys* notion of honor, generosity has 
a big part. There are not merely certain things you 
must not do ; there are also a host of things you must 
do; and many of these latter call for a deal of un- 
selfishness and liberality. Stanton could pass that 
test too amongst his fellows: even, stranger still, 



CHILDHOOD 9 

could pass it at home. Brother and sister knew him 
as one who delighted to give, who, beneath the noble 
sternness and proper dignity of a big brother, had a 
finely masked interest in their infantile concerns 
and a gruff large-handedness with even such treas- 
ures as lucky taws and iron-wood tops and rockaway 
skates. 

The boy was affectionate and had the quick intui- 
tion of affection ; but obviously, for a boy, that was 
a thing most especially to be disguised. What real 
boy but has a horror of being thought " soft " ! 
The dear old Aunt Joanna, at eighty-three, says, 
"Willie is the one who understands me. I don't 
even have to speak to him: he knows." But 
"Willie" (who confided to the writer that one of 
the agonies of boyhood at home was to be called 
" Willie "; yet who signed himself so in "his letters 
home to the end) would have been most horribly 
embarrassed to hear her say so. 

It would not be quite correct to say that he was 
quick-tempered. His general air of cheerful poise 
and fun belies that. But his temper was fierce when 
aroused. He nearly killed a young scamp who 
threw a broken bottle and put out an eye of his dog. 
Felt. All through his life, one sensed in Stanton 
latent fires of wrath; which, on the rare occasions 



10 WILLIAM STANTON 

when they came to the top, were decidedly volcanic. 

It has been said of him that he was handsome. 
Well, tastes differ. I never thought him so ; though 
something of the fineness of the man shone in his 
face and made him wonderfully winning. You 
have his portrait in this book, and can decide for 
yourself. It matters little either way. He cer- 
tainly had a native ease and grace, and a perfect 
social tact, uncommonly notable in a boy. He was 
a good dancer. He was popular with girls of his 
acquaintance. But he had a boy's exalted scorn 
and fine condescension toward such matters. You 
would have tested his temper disastrously if you 
so much as hinted at classing him with the " sissies." 

Of course there is a whole world more that might 
be written of Stanton's boyhood. Let these scrappy 
notes suffice. We have better things to tell of him. 
But if they have given you the notion that he was 
any singularly precocious or astounding sort of boy, 
they have been misleading. He was indeed a very 
fine and likable boy, but most healthily normal, with 
a good, wholesome share of boy faults. He lived in 
modest circumstances, but with a well-to-do bachelor 
uncle, John Stanton, handily in the offing, to pinch 
his ear and line his palm with most satisfactory fre- 
quency. He battered his homely way amongst his 



CHILDHOOD II 

fellows, esteemed with their rough esteem, tested 
and trained in the crude but efficient school of boy 
comradeship, unspoiled, unaffected, and — as they 
would sum it up — " a mighty decent fellow." 



CHAPTER II 

We come now to speak of Stanton's vocation to 
the Society of Jesus and of the beginnings of his 
life in that Society. His vocation is of a sort that 
is really astonishing, though by no means uncom- 
mon. The boy simply thought all along, from an 
early day which even he himself could not mark, 
that he was to be a Jesuit. If you had put him to it, 
with his back to the wall, he would have admitted 
it at any time from his thirteenth or fourteenth year. 
But he never said much about it. It was one of 
those fixed things, to be tucked away in a corner of 
the soul, sacred from prying eyes, not even to be 
much discussed or reflected on by its owner: but 
which you knew always was there, almost as a part 
of yourself. 

That sort of vocation is, I say, astonishing. 
God's finger is most appreciably in it. It is an in- 
terior grace so strong and clear as to leave no room 
for doubts in the mind of him who has it. It 
seems due to no external circumstance, to owe little 
or nothing directly to suggestion or even to training. 

12 



THE YOUNG JESUIT 13 

It comes into the soul, one knows not just when, 
like a gentle breath of air, without violence, without 
noise, without apparent effort : and once in, it enters 
almost into the very substance of a man, and will 
urge him even when he kicks against the goad. Yet 
because of its nature we can say little of it beyond 
a brief chronicling of the fact, and the remark that, 
with all its awesome strangeness, it is wonderfully 
common as a type of vocation. Those who have ex- 
perienced its like will recognize it even in these halt- 
ing words : those who have not, might find it incom- 
prehensible after a folio volume upon it. 

Though there was little talk at home of Stanton's 
vocation, it was an accepted fact, and to the quiet, 
sweet-tempered mother a cause of private joy. Her 
health, for years frail, was failing more and more 
swiftly in the latter years of William's course at the 
University. But with the secret sacrifice which 
mothers know how to make, she concealed the fact 
as much as possible. She dreaded lest it might in 
some way be an obstacle to her boy's following of 
God's call. And when, on July 16, 1887, in his 
eighteenth year, he entered the Jesuit house of novi- 
ciate near Florissant, Missouri, she was ready to 
sing her Nunc Dimittis, 

Becoming a Jesuit novice is a most unromantic 



14 WILLIAM STANTON 

affair. A young man makes application, in a vague 
sort of way, to some one in authority at a Jesuit 
house, and is directed to the proper superior, who 
says, " We'll see." After a time, he is again di- 
rected to present himself to three or four grave 
and reverend fathers in turn, and answers ques- 
tions which strike him at the time as a bit imperti- 
nent. He is rather impatient: the matter has all 
been settled between God and himself; what have 
these reverend busybodies to do with it? After 
another little time, he is told a day when he should 
go to the house of noviciate. He fetches a sigh, 
perhaps; packs his belongings, with a touch of re- 
luctance, perhaps; and goes. That is all there is 
to it. Of course, the applicant might be astonished 
to know that his request has been very seriously and 
prudently weighed, and that the whole proceeding 
was by no means so cock-sure and simple as he had 
fancied. At any rate, there he is at last, a novice, 
and the life begins. 

So much has been written of the Jesuit novice- 
ship that nowadays all the world is acquainted with 
it. There is no need for us here to dwell minutely 
upon it. The noviceship has a two-fold purpose : to 
test the genuineness of vocation, and the quality of 
the novice to follow it : and to introduce the novice 



THE YOUNG JESUIT 15 

to the religious life and begin to train him in its vir- 
tues. In practice the two purposes are secured 
mainly by the common life of the novices. There 
are " experiments," as every one knows, rather spe- 
cially designed as tests : working in the kitchen and 
scullery, the month of retreat in the Spiritual Ex- 
ercises of St. Ignatius, teaching catechism to chil- 
dren. But the real test is the life itself : a humdrum, 
quiet, monotonous two years of prayer and instruc- 
tion, of obedience in little things, of self-adapta- 
tion to one's fellows, of silence and reserve and 
quiet self-control, of striving to enter into what we 
may call God's point of view, of building up in one's 
self the supernatural structure of sacrifice. There 
are few, if any, thrills; plenty of grey days, — but 
rarely black ones. No detail of the life is really 
hard : it is the sum of it which tries a man's moral 
temper. 

During the month of October, 1887, Stanton, 
with the other novices, went through the " long re- 
treat," the full Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. 
They were to have, for him, a tragic close. A few 
days before the end, he was called home by the criti- 
cal condition of his mother. He spent two or three 
hours with her, and had to hurry back to his re- 
treat. Indeed, she urged him to return. Her work 



i6 WILLIAM STANTON 

was nearly over, she knew, but it was no part of 
her desire in laying it down that its early complet- 
ing should interfere with her son's high calling. 
He went back to his noviceship ; and on the last day 
of the Exercises, October 31, his mother died. He 
was not with her at the end, but came into the city 
the day following. She died holily, peacefully, re- 
joicing in the good gift that God had given her 
through her boy. 

We have no record of Stanton's thoughts or 
feelings at this sad time ; nor, indeed, have we any 
need of such. He was sorely stricken, no doubt, 
with that most sacred grief which it would be bar- 
baric in us to unveil. The Florissant house of 
noviciate is only a scant twenty miles from St. 
Louis, so that his relatives could easily see him from 
time to time, and particularly during the first lonely 
days after his mother's death. Henceforth the good 
Aunt Joanna was to be a mother to the young 
Stantons. 

There are a half-dozen or so letters to this aunt 
during the noviceship, saved from utter inanity 
only by the kindly and affectionate concern they 
show for all the little interests of his family. That 
is the only gleam of intelligence or interest in them. 
Mentally a novice's life is decidedly bare. His little 



THE YOUNG JESUIT 17 

round of days, centered upon God and himself, 
furnishes the scantiest matter for external record 
in letters. Besides, the noviceship almost infallibly 
breeds aloofness; the novice has a great dread of 
distractions; he is in a state of moral violence, with 
all his energies taken up in an intense interior effort. 
If one adds to that the native reticence of northern 
blood and the moral bashfulness of one little more 
than a boy in years, one can readily understand 
how ill-equipped young Stanton was for self-ex- 
pression. 

Nor could even his fellow-novices tell much of 
him beyond comparatively insignificant external de- 
tails ; for the novice is no more communicative with 
his fellows, ordinarily, than with outsiders. Stan- 
ton went about his work with his usual easy poise 
of manner, but with an almost savage intensity 
within. Some little of that latter leaks out, acci- 
dentally, in the discovery of certain indiscreet aus- 
terities which he practised: with a good will and 
the rash earnestness of youth, going far beyond 
the small measure of corporal penance permitted 
the novices in general. A fellow-novice tells of 
Stanton^s wearing the sharp-pointed iron girdle, 
common enough in use amongst religious communi- 
ties, not for an hour or so in the early morning, but 



i8 WILLIAM STANTON 

continuously for days. And there are some kin- 
dred instances, which go to show the resolute ear- 
nestness with which he set about these beginnings 
of his life in the Society. But time and common 
sense gradually tempered this indiscretion of zeal, 
yet without diminishing the generous spirit which 
prompted it. Men wise in the spiritual life tell us 
insistently that the stability of the religious struc- 
ture in after life depends singularly upon the foun- 
dation of whole-hearted devotedness to God laid in 
the noviceship. A man who does not make there 
il gran rifiuto, may possibly make it later : but the 
odds are against his doing so. We have no doubt 
of Stanton's prompt and complete self-sacrifice in 
the beginning, both from the little we know of his 
noviceship and from the wider knowledge of his 
succeeding years in the Society. 

A trifling detail may be noted here : in his second 
year as a novice he began to use Aloysius as a sec- 
ond name, having probably assumed it when, at the 
close of the first year, he was allowed to pronounce 
the " vows of devotion.** ^ 

1 These are the simple vows of the Society, perpetual, but 
admitted only as a private act, by permission of the provincial. 
They do not formally constitute the one who makes them a 
religious, as they are not accepted in that sense by the So- 
ciety. 



THE YOUNG JESUIT 19 

On July 31, 1889, he completed his two years of 
noviceship, and pronounced his vows as a scholas- 
tic of the Society. He remained two years more 
in the house, as a " Junior," according to the custom 
in the Society, to review and further his knowledge 
of classical literature. In these years of study there 
is, of course, a trifle more latitude in the recreations 
allowed than in the noviceship; and in long tramps 
about the great valley lying in the angle of the Mis- 
souri and Mississippi rivers Stanton had oppor- 
tunity to develope his interest in the phenomena of 
natural history and to exercise his exceptionally 
good powers of observation. He was soon a sort 
of local authority on the birds and snakes and plants 
of the district. We may say that here he put the 
foundation of the scientific habit which became so 
notable a part of his after life. 

He was never a dry-as-dust scientist, a man 
wrapped up in the mere technicalities. His own 
superb vitality made life, in all its forms, the chief 
natural interest for him. If he became expert in 
the classification of animals and insects of all sorts, 
it was only because of his keen concern with the 
individuals of each class. There was never a man, 
I dare say, of his breadth and accuracy of scientific 
knowledge, who had about him less of the tradi- 



20 WILLIAM STANTON 

tional formalism and provincialism of the scien- 
tist. His mind, with all its balance, was swift and 
imaginative ; he combined the patient persistence of 
the plodder with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of the 
boy. Then too, he was a most companionable man, 
a good talker, an even better listener. 

In these years, too, his character began to reas- 
sert itself, after the long negation of the noviceship. 
He bore then, as all his life, the definitive stamp of 
the religious : yet less and less as a mere type, and 
more as the very pronounced individual which he 
was. His quiet spirit of fun crept out to the sur- 
face again, together with that love of romance 
which kept him his heart of a boy till the end. 

All his companions of the years at Florissant 
bear testimony to his likeableness. He was then, 
as always, very popular. But he was in no sense 
a leader amongst his fellows, he had little or no 
initiative. He had a baffling sort of reserve, not 
from timidity or mere self -consciousness: but in 
part the result of native indolence, in part the prod- 
uct of a young and raw asceticism. True, anything 
like devotional ostentation was utterly foreign to 
him; yet as a novice and junior scholastic it was 
noted of him that he spent all his spare time before 
the Blessed Sacrament. Explain it how one will, 



THE YOUNG JESUIT 21 

notable piety, even amongst religious persons, 
usually bars its possessor from perfect comradeship 
with others. He was over- jealous of his own in- 
terior life and suspicious of all that might intrude 
upon it. " Secretum meum mihi " is an excellent 
counsel, yet not an easy one to be mastered grace- 
fully by a young man scarcely out of his teens. 

He excelled in sports and delighted in long 
tramps. But it was matter of common observation 
that during these Florissant years he never once 
attempted to organize a party for games or an out- 
ing. If only some one else made the arrangements, 
he gladly formed one of the party, a most welcome 
comrade and a stalwart performer. His strength 
and endurance were exceptional. A traditional 
walk was to the junction of the Missouri and Mis- 
sissippi rivers, distant some eighteen miles from 
the house of noviciate. During one vacation, when 
Stanton and three others made this tramp, they lost 
their way and walked some forty-five miles in all 
before they reached their goal and returned home. 
For provision they had with them only a bottle of 
wine and some biscuits. Three of the walkers were 
out of commission for days after, but Stanton ap- 
parently suffered no inconvenience at all. 

He was outwardly phlegmatic; the common 



22 WILLIAM STANTON 

opinion said he " had no nerves." In reality the 
man was most keenly sensitive and delicately organ- 
ized. A crude practical ghost- joke, which did not 
affect its other victims beyond the immediate mo- 
ment, left Stanton, to the astonishment of all, 
broken and sleepless for nearly a week. 

Some of his early teachers in the Society thought 
him lazy and prodded him, perhaps more vigor- 
ously than kindly. It was characteristic of Stanton 
that none of his comrades of the time suspected that 
he felt this very much; characteristic too, that the 
prodding was for the most part quite ineffectual. 
When Stanton moved, the motive force must come 
from the inside; and he had his own views about 
duty. 

One particular instance is recalled, out of the or- 
dinary. Stanton's turn came to practice public 
speaking before the other novices. He blundered 
through a few sentences in a listless fashion, and 
with apparent unconcern; much as a school-boy 
might go through the same horrible bore. The 
Father in charge of the class brought him up 
roundly, and sent him to his seat with a good sting- 
ing rebuke. At the next class Stanton was made to 
try again, and positively astonished his companions 
by his vigor and dash of thought, speech, and man- 



THE YOUNG JESUIT 23. 

ner. He could be waked up ; but his tendency was 
to slip back immediately into his old lackadaisical 
ways. Later in life, when he had found himself, 
he became a very interesting and forceful speaker. 

The summer of 1891 found him in St. Louis, to 
begin his three years' course in philosophy and the 
natural sciences. The metaphysics of the schools 
had little attraction for Stanton. He worked at 
his task conscientiously, and passed all his examina- 
tions with success. But beyond that he did not go. 
Physics and chemistry were a trifle more to his 
taste, yet not even in them did he find his metier. 
The man was tremendously alive, and it was life 
which drew him: in ever ascending scale, as his 
career shows, from mere vivid curiosity about 
plants and insects up to that incomprehensible ful- 
ness of Hfe which is the crown of God's work in 
His creatures — of which Christ said, " I am come 
that they may have life, and may have it more 
abundantly." But as yet, Stanton had not surely 
found himself; he was still in the vague. The three 
years went by in quiet routine, and he marched 
with his fellows. 

Vacations were passed at a villa four hundred 
miles to the northeast, up in Wisconsin: six or 
seven weeks each summer. The villa was on an 



a4 WILLIAM STANTON 

island in one of a chain of lakes, with wooded hills 
all about. It was a delightful place for all, for 
none more than for Stanton. He was a man of the 
open, vigorous, athletic, well set-up, extraordinarily 
lithe and muscular. His summers were times of im- 
mense interest and activity, when in field and wood 
and water he made himself at home, observing, play- 
ing, studying, all at once. He began collecting — 
all sorts of things: butterflies, snakes, moles, tur- 
tles, and " such small deer." His skill in swim- 
ming became really astonishing, and remained a tra- 
dition of glory for the men who followed him. All 
competition, in his time and later, was tested by the 
" records "of Stanton, and was unanimously found 
wanting. 

These were years of quiet growth, uneventful, 
even, serene. He did nothing to mark him out 
amongst his comrades, yet even then the man car- 
ried an aura about him, of native charm and (though 
perhaps no one defined it) of both native and super- 
natural nobility. He was one of those men who 
do not need to do anything to signalize themselves : 
what they are is amply sufficient. There was no 
lack of men with him who surpassed him in bril- 
liancy, whose accomplishments were more apt to 
make a stir in their small world, and who were ener- 



THE YOUNG JESUIT 25 

getic and insistent where Stanton was unobtrusive 
and self-effacing. But it was Stanton who thrust 
up above the level, quite unconscious of his little 
eminence. And it was this unconsciousness, too, 
which did much to endear him to his comrades. 

At twenty-four, then, we have him, a tall, well 
set-up man, reserved but not remote, quiet, slow of 
manner, drawling of speech, but with a quick eye and 
a vague impression about him of latent activity 
that seemed yet to lack the nameless something 
which should call it forth; brave in an enduring, 
negative way; stubborn and strong, but not aggres- 
sive; intellectually mediocre, except where his in- 
terest was aroused, as it was in the field of natural 
history ; a man to pass unnoticed in the crowd, were 
it not that the crowd loved him and somehow 
pointed him out. 



CHAPTER III 

Pascal says that a man does not come to the age 
of reason until he is twenty-one years old. The 
saying is not all paradox. In reality, twenty-one 
years are hardly enough. How many hard knocks 
it takes to develop that beginning of wisdom which 
alone can rightly be called the age of reason! How 
many mistakes one must make, and learn to profit 
by ! Perhaps twenty-five or thirty might be nearer 
the age of reason. In this matter the Society of 
Jesus prefers not to take chances. It wants to turn 
out a dependable type of workman and it is willing 
to go slowly, to spend time on the job. For the 
Jesuit the age of reason, as a rule, dates only from 
his thirty-fifth year. 

Up to that time he is ordinarily in real tutelage, 
he is considered by the Society as immature, as an 
intellectual and moral minor. The Society believes 
that he can grow mentally and in character even 
after his arteries have begun to harden. His days 
pass in placid monotony, in a prescribed routine, with 
his planning done for him by another^ and his en- 
ergies directed by another. 

26 



THE TEACHER 27 

If you know the outward history of one of the 
Jesuit scholastics, you know the outward history of 
practically all of them. The real events of his life 
are interior, of the mind and heart : just as are the 
real events of a child's Hfe. He is making astound- 
ing discoveries in himself: viewing, with the thrill 
of a first explorer, truths which he recognizes, a 
few years later, amongst the commonplaces of hu- 
man knowledge. His " peaks in Darien " are 
mostly gravel-heaps along the beaten track of hu- 
manity. He is forever starting deer that turn to 
hares, and setting his soul exultingly upon new 
paths — which he finds, to his chagrin, lined with 
the comfortable villas of the dead. Ordinarily he 
is afflicted by spiritual growing pains, and at times 
is cast down in spirit by what, for the moment, he 
calls the fetters of his tutelage. He kicks against 
the goad, as every child does, and dreams large 
achievements for his majority, and, it may be, is 
inwardly supercilious toward what his forbears have 
done. But his dreams grow cold, and their dimin- 
ished glory fades as his years go on. He acquires 
a new gesture, the shrug of his shoulders: and a 
new habit, of looking before he leaps. 

He is steadying himself, getting balance, perspec- 
tive, prudence. It is all so sensible, so practical. 



28 WILLIAM STANTON 

But it is not quite perfect — what human process 
is? Much is being gained, but something is being 
lost. Your Jesuit is getting circumspection, but he 
is losing fire. He is growing disillusionized, but 
he is losing the pulse of romance. He may make 
fewer mistakes, but will he be so generous in spend- 
ing himself? Ah, that is the melancholy part of 
this coming to the use of reason. 

Now and then one comes through the ordeal, 
rational indeed, yet not wholly spoiled of the spirit 
of his boyhood: keeping the vision: for whom the 
glory has not departed. You can mark the trail 
of such a man across the world, for it gleams. Of 
this sort was Stanton, though few might suspect it 
at the time. His dreams were of imperishable stuff, 
and the years only ripened him for their fulfilment. 
He had the patience to wait for that fulfilment, 
even though he had no notion of what it might be. 
He had hidden within him the wholesome potency of 
ambition, but none of the fever of ambition. He 
was content in a perfectly sure hope that what 
work God had for him to do would be put to his 
hand in good time. He took up each task that was 
given him, without questioning, without doubt. He 
had a remarkably constant and simple sense of God's 



THE TEACHER 29 

guiding providence, and an unblustering, quiet con- 
fidence. 

When his three years of philosophy were com- 
pleted, he entered upon another stage in his growth, 
in the course of which his more immediate voca- 
tion was to come to him. In the autumn of 1894, 
he was sent to St. Ignatius College, Chicago, to begin 
the period of teaching which ordinarily intervenes 
between the philosophical and theological studies 
of a Jesuit scholastic. It was his beginning of ac- 
tive work for others, humdrum and prosaic enough, 
as any one knows who has borne the burden of the 
class-room. He taught English and mathematics 
in the last year of the high school. 

Stanton was not a brilliant teacher, nor was he 
an aggressive personality. There was nothing spe- 
cial about him that shone, nothing you could put 
your finger on as making him stand out amongst 
the half-dozen scholastics engaged in the same work 
at the college. He was not thrown much with the 
boys outside his class, and he spent only one year 
in the college. Yet he is one of the best remem- 
bered of his generation. Every boy in the college 
during his time seemed to know him, and every one 
who knew him liked him. His dark complexion 



30 WILLIAM STANTON 

and long eyes won him the name of " Jap " amongst 
the boys, a sobriquet that had in it nothing of dis- 
respect, but was a token rather of regard, of admis- 
sion into the freemasonry of boyhood. With all his 
quiet smiling reserve, his easy and unassumed dig- 
nity of manner, the boys felt he was one of them. 
The man had a charm about him that was indefina- 
ble but compelling. Perhaps no boy in the college 
could have given you a reason for taking to Stan- 
ton. He came amongst them as a stranger. It was 
not his prowess as an athlete that won him their 
admiration, for they knew nothing of that; nor 
was it his immense store of practical knowledge con- 
cerning birds and beasts, for he had no occasion to 
display it before the boys. It was nothing adventi- 
tious, but the man himself, that made him a sort of 
personage and got him friends wherever his smile 
introduced him. 

Now he was beginning to find himself, to see 
what he could do, to discover real openings for his 
activities, and to measure up to the actualities of his 
dreams. But it was only the beginning, as yet. 
He did not dislike teaching and he did his work as a 
teacher passably well. He had a great deal of quiet 
influence over boys. He won confidence almost 
without effort. He was sympathetic without being 



yj- 



THE TEACHER 31 

demonstrative, and unusually patient, tolerant, and 
sane. He was not a martinet. Order in his class 
was kept fairly well, but by no means primly. His 
own easy, drawling way and his persistent good- 
nature made it impossible for him to be a severe 
task-master. Of course the boys "got ahead of 
him " from time to time. But every teacher who 
is not a born fool expects that ; and Stanton, I need 
scarcely say, was not a born fool. Conducting a 
class is not a Theocritan idyll — pace some books on 
pedagogy: it is more often than not a contest of 
wits between teacher and pupils. And a good 
teacher must also be a " good sport," and take his 
misplays with a grin. Stanton's misplays were not 
many, and he learned quickly enough how to re- 
cover from them. I am not going into details about 
his methods. It is barely possible that some boys 
may wade this far through these pages ; and I can- 
not take chances on showing a teacher's hand and 
giving the game away. Enough to say that his 
methods, whilst very smooth and simple, were rea- 
sonably successful. 

I know that he would have been quite content to 
spend all his life in the class-room. He was not one 
of those who fancy that any shortcoming in their 
work is due only to external circumstances, those 



32 WILLIAM STANTON 

restless folk forever chafing under the present task 
and striving to convince themselves and others that 
" somewhere else " — anywhere else, as a rule — 
they would meet with the success that they have not 
now. Stanton knew quite well that a man with the 
one ambition of helping others can find his field of 
activity wherever he finds human beings. It is 
also true, of course, that certain gifts and tempera- 
ments demand particular external adjuncts and sur- 
roundings in order to reach their full development 
and use. It cannot be denied that circumstance too 
is a factor in a man's efficiency. But it is only a sec- 
ondary factor. The essential things are ability and 
energy, eagerness to do, devotedness, and unselfish- 
ness of purpose. No ordinary adversity or uncon- 
geniality of surroundings can frustrate these. 
When, in after years, Stanton offered himself for 
other work than that of teaching, it was by no 
means in the spirit of running away from a disagree- 
able task: rather, we shall see, in deliberate choice 
of work which most men might naturally shun. 
But he was by no means a " born teacher." He had 
little or no driving power, could not energize his 
boys, nor overcome that monumental inertia of boy- 
nature which is the real burden and cross of the 
teacher. He was much more interested in his 



THE TEACHER 33 

*' bugs," and his room was as filled with beetles and 
moths and snakes as ever it had been in St. Louis. 

The scholastic year beginning in the autumn of 
1895 found him in Detroit, whither he had been 
sent as lecturer in physics and geology. The new 
work was what many might consider of a more in- 
tellectual kind than that of the preceding year. 
But it was no promotion. The Jesuits, as a rule, 
do not deal much in that sort of thing. The pro- 
vincial simply needed a man to teach some branches 
of physical science in Detroit, and reached out after 
Stanton for the work. He taught one year in De- 
troit, and had spent a few months of a second year 
there, when, in the middle of November, 1896, he 
was called away by his provincial to be sent to a new 
field, the lately opened college in British Honduras, 
Central America. It was in that colony that Stan- 
ton was to find his real life-work. 

The mission of the Society of Jesus in British 
Honduras dates from 185 1, when two English Jes- 
uits from the mission of Jamaica came to Belize, 
the capital and largest town of British Honduras. 
They found only a few thousand Catholics in the 
entire colony, most of them refugees from Yucatan 
during the Indian uprising of 1847-8. The col- 
ony, lying just below Yucatan, on the shore of the 



34 WILLIAM STANTON 

Caribbean Sea, is quite small, in area about the same 
as the State of New Jersey, some eight thousand 
square miles. Its entire population at that time 
could not have been much more than twenty thou- 
sand. 

The new mission was reckoned as part of the 
Vicariate Apostolic of Jamaica, In time it grew, 
more Catholics came in from the unsettled neigh- 
boring republics. In 1888 British Honduras was 
made a Prefecture Apostolic, with Very Reverend 
Salvatore di Pietro, a Sicilian Jesuit, as first Pre- 
fect ApostoHc. The title indicates a simple priest, 
not a bishop, but with the power to administer con- 
firmation. Five years later, in 1893, Father di 
Pietro was appointed Vicar Apostolic for British 
Honduras, and consecrated Titular Bishop of Eurea. 
In the same year the English Province of the So- 
ciety of Jesus turned over the mission to the Mis- 
souri Province, although a number of the English 
fathers, including the superior. Father Hopkins, 
remained to work in the mission. 

In 1887 a Select School had been opened in 
Belize by Father Cassian Gillett, S.J., and nine 
years later, in 1896, this school became the present 
St. John's College. It was to this college Stanton 
was sent, in November, 1896, as its first scholastic 



THE TEACHER 35 

teacher. Another scholastic joined him in the 
spring of the following year. These two with the 
director of the college, Reverend W. Wallace, S.J., 
formed the entire teaching staff, and had in charge 
some seventy-five boys. We may close this chap- 
ter with some extracts from a letter of Stanton to 
a fellow-scholastic in the States, giving his own first 
impressions of his new home. 

He had gone by rail from St. Louis to New Or- 
leans, and there taken steamer. Belize lay four 
days to the south, across the Gulf of Mexico, into 
the Caribbean — and -then, as it has been said, the 
first turn to the right. There was the usual cosmo- 
politan lot of passengers aboard, adventurers for 
health or fortune or thrills, contract laborers, em- 
bryonic revolutionists, mahogany cutters. After 
four days of heartless tossing in the little tramp 
steamer, the voyage came to an end. 

" About 4 A. M.," he writes, " we anchored in 
quiet water, outside the reefs at English Caye, twelve 
miles from Belize, Looking out of my cabin port- 
hole into the darkness I saw a faint glimmer on the 
horizon — the Belize harbor light — and heaved a 
deep sigh of relief. My interior qualms had sub- 
sided. I shaved, took a light breakfast — my first 
meal since leaving the Mississippi — and hastened 



36 WILLIAM STANTON 

on deck. As day broke we steamed slowly through 
the tortuous channel between the charming islands 
which skirt the coast all along the colony. These 
islands are all of coral formation, and are covered 
with a vivid green mantle of mangrove and grace- 
ful coconut palms. The sun was just rising above 
the sea in a gorgeous mass of clouds. ... It took 
at least an hour and a half before we finally arrived 
in port, and during this time the clouds had gath- 
ered into dense cumbrous masses and treated us to 
a few brief but very heavy showers of rain. 

" On inquiring of my simple Belize fellow pas- 
senger concerning the rainy and dry seasons in the 
colony, I received the rather unexpected answer: 
* Young man, I've been engaged in the mahogany 
business up in the bush near Orange Walk for well 
nigh eleven years, and, sir, I came to the conclusion 
that in Honduras there ain't no rainy and dry sea- 
sons ; there's only a rainy season and a damn rainy 
season.' 

" I began to think I had struck the d rainy 

season, for on the day of my arrival we had, by 
actual count, five downpours whilst coming into port, 
and sixteen more before I had fallen asleep that 
night. And these rains are none of your St. Louis 
drizzles, but real pitchfork pours; whilst between 



THE TEACHER 37 

the acts the sun seems hot enough to broil a beef- 
steak in ten minutes' time. The second day it rained 
only twelve times. I got tired counting after that. 
They tell me I have just happened to strike the tail 
end of the rainy season. 

" But to return ; as soon as we anchored we were 
surrounded by a fleet of small sailboats manned by 
crews of variegated colors — all colors, in fact, ex- 
cept white. I examined them from the deck to see 
if I could find any long-tailed black coats amongst 
the throng; but not finding any such sign of the 
brethren, I hired a passage in the nearest boat and 
we were off for the shore a mile or so away. 

" Arriving at the wharf, the other passengers in 
the boat soon scattered in various directions, and I 
found myself alone. I caught up my bag and made 
for the nearest street of the town. I had gone but 
a few steps when I descried a big umbrella and a 
long-tailed black coat beneath, just turning a corner, 
and a minute later made out the broad, beaming face 
of Father L beneath the umbrella. Three min- 
utes later we arrived at the residence; and here I 
am. 

" Now what about Belize itself, the people, the 
college, the boys, my impressions, etc. ? 

" First of all, everything in Belize is in every 



38 WILLIAM STANTON 

way new and quite different from what we are accus- 
tomed to in our northern climes. The town, viewed 
from the harbor with the morning sun shining 
against it, is really charming. It seems to rise 
from the sea as by enchantment, with its rows of 
clean white houses gleaming amongst the coconut 
palms and mango trees in which they lie half buried. 
They stretch a mile and a half or two miles along 
the shore, terminated by the Governor's house at the 
south end and the barracks at the north, with the 
Belize River half way between. The spires of sev- 
eral churches stand boldly up against the green 
foliage of the virgin forest beyond, whilst the neat 
brick convent of the Sisters of Mercy on a point of 
land thrust out into the sea rises high above its 
neighbours out of a mass of coconut palms: from 
the harbor it is the most conspicuous building in 
sight. 

" There are probably not more than a dozen brick 
houses in the whole city, beyond the convent, our 
own church, and three Protestant churches. The 
dwellings and shops are all of wood, many of them 
built on stilts to avoid the dampness, for the whole 
town and surrounding country is very low and 
swampy. Belize, in fact, was built originally in a 
swamp occupying both sides of the mouth of the 



. THE TEACHER '39 

Belize River, the advantage of the position being 
the deep harbor outside the bar, which facihtates the 
shipping of logwood and mahogany, the chief prod- 
ucts of the country. The ground is all made ground, 
composed in great part of old ballast, mahogany 
chips, coconut husks, tin cans, old stoves, broken 
bottles, and such like valuable material. 

" Our streets — there are no sidewalks — are not, 
of course, asphalted boulevards, but made of broken 
coral and clean white sea sand, This makes fine 
walks in fair weather, though during the rainy sea- 
son and at high tides some parts are several inches 
below sea level. We have no screeching trolley 
cars or dazzling electric lights; but it may astonish 
you to learn that bicycles are quite common. The 
graceful coconut, the flamboyant tamarind, the 
lime, almond, banana, orange, and bread fruit trees 
are seen on all sides. The coconut and mango are 
to be found in nearly every back yard. 

" During the first week the thermometer never 
showed lower than 84° F. in our study hall, though 
I looked at it every night before going to the dormi- 
tory at 8 130 p. M. They tell me this is the coolest 
season of the year. I hope I'll enjoy the summer 
when it comes. At present I am covered with 
prickly heat, but I suppose it will have worn itself 



40 WILLIAM STANTON 

out before the warm season. The day before yes- 
terday, however, a cold wave struck the colony, and 
the boys were shivering and wrapping themselves in 
blankets and hiding their ears in the turned up col- 
lars of their heaviest coats. It made me laugh. 
The thermometer actually dropped to 69° F. The 
extreme low temperature of Belize during the last 
eleven years has been 65°. So the last few days 
must seem to the natives extraordinarily cold. 

" The inhabitants of Belize form a really remark- 
able conglomeration. Since my arrival I have met 
probably a dozen or fifteen really white men, in- 
cluding our own Fathers and His Excellency the 
Governor, Sir Alfred Moloney. Moreover, you can 
form no idea whatever of the race or color of a man 
from his written name. Wonderful surprises await 
you when you meet the individuals bearing such 
names as O'Neil, Kelly, Bennett, Marchand, Dunn, 
LaCroix, and the like. Instead of an honest Hi- 
bernian face and a charming brogue, you will find 
in all probability a dusky son of Afric's sultry clime 
and listen to a strange West Indian Creole dialect. 

" The population of Belize is given as seven thou- 
sand ; whites 282 ; that is, European whites, for the 
Spanish American element is not reckoned in this 



THE TEACHER 41 

estimate. The rest of the population comprises 
blacks, Caribs, Yucatecans, Moika and Mongo In- 
dians, Chinese, East Indian coolies; but above all 
and especially Creoles — which word has here an 
entirely different meaning from what it has in the 
States. A Belize Creole is a mixture of any degree 
of black and white born in the colony. The city is 
essentially Creole, though the colony is not. It is a 
rather ticklish business to enquire about the ances- 
try, or even the immediate parents, of Belize people. 
The blood relationships existing are generally quite 
astonishing to new comers from colder climes. 

"As regards the college itself and the boys, I 
must say that I was most agreeably surprised to find 
how much had been done in the brief space of a 
few months by the energetic labors of Father Wal- 
lace in building up the college as it is. Everything 
about the college and surroundings is very neat and 
clean. The building is a new, plain, two-storey 
frame structure, with many doors and windows on 
all sides. On the ground floor are two large class 
rooms, music room, boys* refectory, store rooms, 
and the office of the prefect of studies. Above are 
another class room, library, study hall, and two 
small private rooms. One of these last is occupied 



42 WILLIAM STANTON 

by Father Wallace ; the other is mine — or rather, I 
keep my trunk there, but I live with the boarders in 
the dormitory, play ground, and class room. The 
rest of the community live in the adjoining resi- 
dence. Throughout the house and college nearly all 
the rooms are separated from each other merely by 
high wooden partitions rising some eight feet from 
the floor. This is to allow of perfect ventilation 
and the admittance of all the sea breeze possible. 

" We have at present sixteen boarders and about 
sixty day scholars, distributed among two prepara- 
tory classes and the First Form. Remember, the 
college has not yet completed one year of its exist- 
ence. 

*' Just imagine me as I am at this moment, 7 130 
A. M., seated in our neat, airy, little study hall, 
doors and windows wide open, the slanting beams 
of the morning sun, reflected from the verandah 
outside, bathing the whole room in a mellow amber 
light and bringing out vividly the variegated faces 
of my youthful charges. The thermometer at my 
side marks just 86°, whilst a balmy sea breeze plays 
delightfully through the room. The huge fronds 
of a coconut palm just outside the window rattle 
cheerfully against the eave. But just look at the 
faces before me: five pure whites, two chalk-eyed 



THE TEACHER 43 

grinning negroes (Creoles), an untamable wee bit 
of a Maya Indian endeavouring vainly to sit still 
on a civilized chair, two half Spaniards and Indians 
from the north, a couple of Guatemaltecan Span- 
iards almost as black as negroes but of refined Cau- 
casian features, and the rest curious mixtures of 
white, black, Indian, and I know not what — such 
are my little boarders. ... As you may well im- 
agine, my boys are somewhat different in character 
too from the American small boy. I am beginning 
to know them now, as I am with them all day and 
all night, weekdays, Sundays, Emberdays, and every 
other kind of days. 

" You will want to know how I like the place. 
On this point I can say with all earnestness that I 
have never felt better, happier, more contented in 
my life. Though this contentment, I assure you, 
does not come from the perfect satisfaction of all 
natural inclinations. . . . But aside from the spir- 
itual aspect of the case, a fellow could really get 
heaps of fun out of innumerable things here, if only 
he had some one to laugh with him. I am sure I 
could name a dozen of the scholastic brethren who 
would enjoy Belize immensely. But for their own 
sakes and the sakes of others, let no chronic grum- 
blers turn their eyes toward Belize. ... It strikes 



44 WILLIAM STANTON 

me that men with a large stock of patience, and 
who moreover have an eye for the ridiculous and a 
reasonable store of good humor, would do very 
well." 



CHAPTER IV 

The letter from which we have just quoted is 
particularly significant in that it is the first of Stan- 
ton's letters with the note of enthusiasm. It is not 
ebullient; but the drawl is gone. He was waking 
up. And it was a strange thing that woke him up 
(and quite characteristic that there is scarcely a 
hint of this strange thing in his letter) ; he was 
roused by a striking chance for self-sacrifice. It 
is not telling secrets to say that, especially in those 
early days, the possibility of being sent to Belize 
was, for most of the scholastics of his province, a 
very disagreeable possibility: for some, a positive 
horror.^ Now, there is a smug sort of man, with 
an " I thank Thee, Lord ..." attitude, who might 
like to march in ostentatiously where common mor- 
tals shrink and hold back. No need to say there 
was none of that spirit in Stanton. Cant and phar- 

1 Which, however, (in mere fairness it must be added), did 
not clash with the entire readiness of their wills to accept that 
destination once it were commanded them. It is, needless to 
remark, such combination of difficulty and generosity which 
makes up heroism. 

45 



46 WILLIAM STANTON 

isaism were absolutely foreign to his nature. In- 
deed, the most certain thing about him was that, 
even when he did unusual things, he was not con- 
scious of their unusualness. 

He was told to go to Belize, and he went: most 
serenely, good-humouredly : not at all heroically, as 
one going into exile. But underneath his matter- 
of-fact appearance there was a little honest, boyish 
thrill. There was a touch of adventure, of ro- 
mance, about the order, that made it naturally ap- 
peal to him. There was a possibility of discom- 
fort, and a call for endurance; and he welcomed 
them. These two elements go a long way toward 
giving you the real Stanton. 

His work in Belize was essentially the same as 
that of a teaching scholastic in any of the colleges 
of the Society; only the conditions under which he 
worked were different. He taught a class about 
equivalent to the first year of high school in the 
States. His boys were of all sorts, as may be seen 
from his letter, but by no means unintelligent. I 
believe he taught them better than he had taught 
his former pupils ; and he certainly made them his 
friends. But withal, teaching was not his forte nor 
ever to become so. He did not shirk his task, but 
the task was not of the sort to stir his enthusiasm. 



BELIZE 47 

It is significant that when he had to get up the first 
printed prospectus and catalogue of the college, he 
did most of its composition with a scissors. 

During his three years in Belize he had charge 
of the school discipline, kept order in the play- 
ground, presided at games, took the boys on walks, 
and the like. He organized the first gymkhana, 
or field-day of sports, in the college, and made it an 
annual affair. The prizes for it have ever since 
been contributed by the merchants of the city. As 
part of that surpassing loyalty to all things British 
which distinguishes the colonial from the home mem- 
ber of the Empire, Belize goes in heart and soul 
for cricket. Stanton made certain foolish efforts 
to oust cricket for base-ball, but of course without 
success. It is easier to change the Government of 
a people than their games; perhaps the former 
change is the less important. 

Bathing in the shark-infested Caribbean is not 
quite so simple a matter as in other waters. Along 
the Caribbean one does not plunge in cheerfully 
anywhere: at least, not if one is prudent. The 
ordinary method of bathing demands an enclosure 
of stout timbers driven securely into the sand along 
the beach, to keep out sharks, saw-fish, sting-rays, 
sea-nettles, and such unwelcome visitors. An en- 



48 WILLIAM STANTON 

closure of this sort, usually rather small (say, some 
fifteen or twenty feet by thirty or forty feet), is 
locally known as a " kraal." There was a public 
kraal just north of the city, considerably larger 
than the ordinary, in which the boys bathed. To 
this day, long after the old kraal has been broken 
up by the sea, Stanton's " old boys " talk with ad- 
miration of his swimming and diving there. Back 
of the beach was a superb stretch of level sward, 
the city common, the scene of cricket matches, foot- 
ball, polo, horse-racing, the play-ground of rich and 
poor, black and white, the most democratic spot in 
a most democratic city. 

All this part of his work was, of course, much 
more interesting than his actual teaching. He never 
quite ceased to be a boy himself, so he had no diffi- 
culty in identifying himself with his boys' concerns. 
He had had some training in military drill and the 
manual of arms, and he was able, as a result, 
to help his boys make an excellent showing in 
the local celebration of Queen Victoria's Diamond 
Jubilee.^ They were admittedly, and very proudly, 

1 Eloquent of the colony's isolation is the fact that it cele- 
brated the " crownation " of Edward VII some two months 
before it actually took place. The coronation was delayed ow- 
ing to Edward's illness ; but Belize, having no communication 
with the outer world save by steamer, was blissfully ignorant 
of the postponement. 



BELIZE 49 

quite the best element in the Belize parade. 

When the day's work and play was done, Stanton 
shared the sleeping quarters of his dusky charges. 
Every day was a busy day for him, and his one 
respite, his one bit of time for himself, came in the 
dormitory after the boys had gone to bed, about 
nine o'clock. Then he had a couple of hours in 
which to study, write letters, arrange his collec- 
tions in botany and entomology, before turning in 
himself for a rather well-earned rest. It was not 
much time, and he was a slow worker (it sometimes 
took him the better part of an hour to write a single 
page in a letter) ; yet it is astonishing how much he 
accomplished by his persistent toil, constantly add- 
ing to his store of scientific knowledge, and remem- 
bering excellently all that he laboriously learned. 
Some of the smaller boys wondered if he slept at 
all, for he was always up and at work when they 
fell asleep at night, and up and about before they 
woke in the morning. 

Once he roused them all in rather a startling 
way. He had been cleaning a borrowed Winchester 
rifle : the usual story : did not know it was loaded : 
snapped the hammer by chance on the heavy car- 
tridge, and blew a great hole in the roof. Yet he 
was deft and skillful with his fingers (although he 



50 WILLIAM STANTON 

was left-handed), and clever enough with tools and 
weapons — except when '' he got thinking," as he 
used to say; and he was as practical-minded as an 
Indian, until something so won his attention as to 
leave him oblivious of all things else. 

The great interest of his Belize days was his col- 
lecting. He had a wonderfully keen eye for speci- 
mens. He might lose his knife or his stick on a 
walk, but he most certainly would not overpass any- 
thing of scientific interest or value. Every tramp 
with the boys was a search for " bugs " and snakes 
and plants and shells, for birds, beasts, reptiles, for 
all that made up the rich nature-life of the tropical 
country. His craze infected the boys until they 
were all on the lookout to get him things. Their 
interest seemed never to die down during the three 
years he was in Belize. 

And what collectors they were! — "Stanton's 
bush-boys," as he called them. Most of them were 
half-wild little Indians (a narrow board-walk put 
down in the college yard positively thrilled them: 
they studied it half hours at a time, and for a week 
were chary of venturing on it), but the tropic woods 
were their home. They could pick out macaws in 
the topmost branches of trees, and point him out 
snakes — tommy-goffs, young wowlahs, corals — in 



BELIZE SI 

never so dense a tangle of " bush." They kept him 
abundantly supplied with beetles, scorpions, centi- 
pedes, spiders, moths, and butterflies. He taught 
them what to look for and how to capture insects 
and the like, and they brought them in. Then Stan- 
ton painstakingly read up on his treasures, usually 
in the dormitory watch, identified them and classi- 
fied them so far as he could. 

Sometimes his collectors brought in strange trove. 
One little Creole marched proudly in one day with 
a live snake in his hand, gripping it behind the head 
whilst the body, as long as himself, writhed and 
squirmed about him. Stanton at the first glance 
took it quietly from the boy and smashed its head 
with a lump of coral. That kind, he told the col- 
lector, must be brought in only when dead: it was 
one of the most poisonous snakes in the colony. 

About a year after his coming he began to send 
duplicate sets of shells, corals, sea-urchins, crus- 
taceans, and the like, to the Smithsonian Institution 
in Washington. Many of these were sent to be 
identified, as he was unable to identify them him- 
self. On one occasion he forwarded quite a collec- 
tion of sea-shells which had been given him by the 
girls attending the Convent Academy in Belize. 
The Smithsonian confessed itself puzzled by the 



52 WILLIAM STANTON 

character of the shells, and asked for more infor- 
mation as to their natural habitat. Nothing quite 
like them, it said, \vas known along the Caribbean. 
Stanton made inquiries and succeeded in finding 
that their local habitat had been a load of ballast 
brought over in a ship from South Africa! 

He was building up a museum in the college, one 
that became in after years a very fine collection — 
and later, as is so often the way, fell to pieces 
through neglect. In those early days the whole 
house was cluttered with specimens, some neatly 
bottled and labelled, some very much alive. The 
Father Superior was driven from his room by ants 
one night, and stumbled, half asleep, to borrow 
Stanton's room for the nignt, whilst the latter slept 
in the dormitory with the boys. But he did not 
sleep in Stanton's room that night. When he 
opened the door to enter it, a dozen huge live crabs, 
in a hungry mood, rushed for him across the floor. 
He said they sounded for the moment like cavalry. 
Another reverend Superior, on occasion, left his 
room rather abruptly when he discovered, on aris- 
ing, that there was a small live alligator under his 
bed. Stanton pooh-poohed his excitement — 
" Why, the little cuss is only about four feet long ! 
He wouldn't hurt any one." The community liked 



BELIZE 53 

Stanton immensely, but some of them were a bit 
uncordial toward his pets. " Love me, love my 
dog," they might accept : but they drew the line de- 
cidedly on live snakes and alligators. ' 

There are no end of stories about these early 
collecting days: of Stanton in his white topi, or 
sun-helmet, laughingly walking home some eight 
miles through the bush with a live porcupine in a 
sack, the " porky " sticking quills into his legs all 
the way; of a twelve- foot shark caught at the mar- 
ket wharf, carted over to the college, and buried back 
of a lumber-shed at dead of night, to have the ants 
clean the skeleton for the museum; of — but we 
shan't have time for them. 

Snakes were his specialty. Almost every walk 
brought him home with a few dead ones (he was 
a very sure shot), and now and then he triumphantly 
carried a live one, usually a wowlah or boa-con- 
strictor. He caught the latter sort with a cleft 
stick, and was often well squeezed in the powerful 
coils before he deposited his capture at the college. 
One half -grown wowlah, about seven or eight feet 
long, gave him a particularly hard tussle and even 
succeeded in biting him severely in the hand. But 
the wowlahs are not poisonous : they kill their prey 
by squeezing. Stanton came soon to be rather 



54 WILLIAM STANTON 

famous locally. When some Creole workmen in a 
near-by place found a great snake under a log, they 
came running to the college for the " snake doc- 
tah," and were as much awed as delighted to see 
Stanton carry it home alive. The Caribs at Stann 
Creek were all convinced that Stanton's walking- 
stick was his " voodoo " for charming snakes, and 
dared not so much as to touch it. Some of his live 
wowlahs he brought with him to the States, donat- 
ing them to various public zoological gardens. 

There were two " long vacations " in the school 
years at Belize, each of about a month's duration; 
one occurring around Christmas time, the other in 
May, in the latter part of the dry season. The 
Christmas holidays were spent mostly in Belize, and 
part of them taken up by the annual retreat of eight 
days. The other was the real holiday, and it was 
passed in some of the outlying mission stations. 
These vacations were times of delight for Stanton. 
He rode, hunted, swam : explored rivers and swamps 
and jungles: collected furiously. And indeed there 
was delight in them for any live man. It is worth, 
even on the most natural basis, months of drudgery 
in the class-room for the sake of just once sailing 
tropic waters by night : in a swift, high-masted, na- 
tive canoe, with no light save that of the stars above 



BELIZE 55 

and the flashing phosphorescence tipping every wave 
and streaking in long lines of silver from your 
bov^^s. One can forget a good deal of weary grind 
and privation in the moment when one rounds the 
headland out of the lazy sea, and swinging in to- 
ward the setting sun, beholds suddenly before one 
a great shining, silent lagoon, palm-fringed, studded 
with green islands, and beyond it the swift abrupt- 
ness of purple mountains against the gold of 
evening. 

Stanton was an ascetic, severe in his diet, rather 
scorning luxuries. But the languorous South took 
hold upon him, we must fancy, for in his first va- 
cation he took up again the practice of smoking, 
abandoned at his entrance into the Society some 
ten years before. We mention this trifle, in the 
expectation that some may seriously consider it a 
sort of moral backsliding. Perhaps it was. Per- 
haps it was only a more intelligent application of 
old principles. Part of religious growth is the 
gaining of perspective, the learning to strike more 
shrewdly and not to waste energy on details of small 
importance. The trained athlete may not still go 
through all the motions of a beginner; he is begin- 
ning to accomplish, instead of merely drilling and 
exercising. His form may not be so meticulously 



56 WILLIAM STANTON 

careful, but his achievements are greater. One 
thing certain, of which this detail is at most an in- 
stance not a proof, was that Stanton had in his 
creed no taint of Manichaeism. 

It was in this first vacation too that Stanton be- 
gan seriously to gather notes for a book on the 
fauna of British Honduras. The book was fin- 
ished, two volumes, some thirteen years later — 
and after his death the manuscript mysteriously dis- 
appeared and is, apparently, lost for ever. It was a 
clever book, and I believe its loss a real misfortune. 
He knew his subject remarkably well, and he wrote 
about it simply and directly with a w^ealth of inter- 
esting detail gathered from obser\^ation. But it 
must be said he did not advance without slips in his 
knowledge of the fauna. One such slip is worth 
noting. 

When he was at Stann Creek (a Carib village to 
the south of Belize) in the May of 1898, an old 
Yankee prospector dropped in at the mission house 
one day with a report of a good-sized drove of 
peccaries seen near a village called All Pines. 
Stanton and the Superior of the mission, keen for 
fresh meat, took their guns promptly and set out 
after them. The peccary is a sort of wild pig, 
running in droves, swift, plucky, and equipped with 



BELIZE 57 

formidable tusks and a blind, charging rage. The 
two hunters picked up the trail, followed it deep 
into the bush to a point where it divided. They 
separated, to follow each of the branching tracks. 
In a few minutes Stanton fired, and shouted ex- 
ultingly, " I've got one ! " His companion sighted 
his quarry almost at the same time. There was a 
regular fusilade of shots, wild squealings, great 
excitement. The hunters, in fine feather, dragged 
out five carcasses to where they had left their 
horses. There was more than they could carry, so 
they began cutting out the hams and loins. A na- 
tive came by, and they bade him help himself to 
the meat; but he only grinned and shook his head 
and passed on. That was a bit strange! Every 
one always shared in the luck of a hunt. But they 
were too busy to think much. They packed their 
meat and rode back to Stann Creek. Evening 
brought a small farmer, sullenly angry, with a claim 
of eighteen dollars for four young porkers of his, 
which formed part of the bag of five peccaries. Of 
course the hunters paid: even added a few dollars 
for secrecy. But the story was too good to keep. 
The local police captain went up to Belize on offi- 
cial business, and the fame of the hunters was wait- 
ing for them when they returned. 



58 WILLIAM STANTON 

But it was probably during this same vacation 
that Stanton discovered the plant which is named 
after him, '' Asplenium Stantoni Copeland " : a 
beautiful sub-tropical fern. Life has its compen- 
sations, you see; though it must be admitted there 
were a hundred to chaff him about " peccaries " for 
one who had so much as heard of " Asplenium 
Stantoni." 

The thing most of note about these vacations, 
however, was that they introduced him to the real 
life of the missions. They were by no means all 
play. He went about with the missionaries on their 
rounds from village to village ; saw their work, the 
field before them, the conditions of that work; even 
helped in it the little he could. It was a crude life, 
full of discomforts, full of monotonous toil, with 
great opportunities to do good, but with great ob- 
stacles to be overcome. He lived on their scanty 
fare, slept in hammocks or on the ground, knew the 
pest of insect-life, tried conclusions with the dull 
apathy of the Indians. He spent longs days in the 
saddle, along *' deer-paths " overgrown with tangled 
bush, and came by evenings into squat thatch vil- 
lages where, prickling all over with " warri ticks," 
he sat down to a meal of yams and tortillas of In- 



BELIZE 59 

dian corn. He learned to sleep, stretched on the 
earth, with a stool tilted over his head and some 
of his clothes draped over the stool to keep out the 
sand-flies. He caught a glimpse of the loneliness 
of that life. Your Central American Maya Indian 
is by no means a bad chap, but he is singularly silent 
and uncommunicative; and the missionaries ordi- 
narily work alone. 

The upshot of it all was that at last he felt he 
had come into his own, that he had found his work 
and his place in life. He dedicated himself to the 
mission. For ten years or more in the Society he 
had really drifted, not as an idler, but rather as a 
boy; doing such work as was set before him, but 
rather perfunctorily, without much interest, smil- 
ingly unconcerned. Now he had a vital object, a 
purpose that could really enkindle him. It was the 
old, old miracle of growth, from a boy to a man. 

His new and real vocation brought no outward 
change in him, of course. He was still the quiet, 
easy-going Stanton to all appearance: not at all a 
man carried out of himself, not a sudden fanatic. 
His character did not change, it merely settled and 
took sharper outline and became definite where be- 
fore it had been vague. He was a new man in one 



6o WILLIAM STANTON 

sense, yet you would read the newness, not in an 
hour or a day, but only in the steady conduct of his 
life. 

He set about studying Maya, the chief native 
language, with the Reverend Pastor Molina, SJ., 
himself a Mexican of part Maya blood and a thor- 
ough master of the strange old language. And he 
told his superiors that if they wanted a man for 
the mission, he was ready so soon as he should 
have completed his theology and been ordained 
priest. He was indeed to come back to Honduras, 
but not until more than six years had passed: and 
the six years carried him widely over the face of 
the earth. 



CHAPTER V 

By the summer of 1899, after his three years in 
Honduras, Stanton had finished the usual five years 
of teaching done by Jesuit scholastics. Another 
scholastic was sent to Belize to take his place, and 
toward the end of June, Stanton returned to the 
States to begin his course in theology. It was va- 
cation time in the States, and he posted up to the 
villa at Waupaca in the northern part of Wiscon- 
sin, where the other teaching scholastics were spend- 
ing the summer. He brought with him a great clut- 
ter of " specimens," including half a dozen live 
wowlahs. 

From Waupaca he wrote, on July 24, to the scho- 
lastic who had succeeded to his post in Belize : 

". . . You may imagine the bombardment of ques- 
tions which I had to stand when I got to the Villa, 
nor have they ceased yet. They tell me I have been 
bought up by the Provincial to boom Belize. They 
have been trying all sorts of ways to get me * off my 
guard ' ( ! ) , but they say I am too well primed and 
confess they have not been able to get one word out 
of me against Belize. Many of the brethren are still 

61 



62 WILLIAM STANTON 

incredulous and have the most fantastic notions of 
St. John's College and of the missions, etc., etc. First 
impressions are hard to eradicate. . . . My reptiHan 
pets became quite famous during my trip. I brought 
them as far as Chicago, where the smallest one died, 
and I concluded to leave the rest of them there, as I 
feared the colder climate of Wisconsin would kill all 
of them." 

Mid-August saw him back in St. Louis, ready for 
the theological grind. He was amongst his old 
comrades again, some of w^hom he had not seen 
during the five years of teaching w^hich had scat- 
tered them about the province. Five years are a 
long time for young men, and bring notable changes. 
They had all grown up mentally, in varying meas- 
ures ; they had known small responsibilities and had 
tested themselves in little w^ays. They remarked 
the growth and change irl each other; but in none 
more than in Stanton. 

'' He was a different man," says one of his com- 
panions of the time. " None of us seemed to have 
matured more in character than he had. It was 
not an obvious change, though we felt it in some 
sort from the first time w^e met him after his re- 
turn. Outw^ardly he was quite the same man, with 
the same easy, drawling way. Yet we sensed, sub- 
tilely but strongly, that the old indolence was gone 



LOOKING FORWARD 63 

for ever, that he was more purposeful, more posi- 
tive, more sure of himself. He was never an ag- 
gressive talker, a man to take the floor without in- 
vitation; nor did he become such now. But when 
he spoke now, it was with a new force, a quiet some- 
thing in voice and manner that compelled interest 
and attention, and that was a source of astonish- 
ment to us all until we had become accustomed to 
the new Stanton." 

He kept his own counsel, as usual. No one 
knew, at the time, of his purpose to return to the 
mission; though before long many suspected it. 
But he was a stalwart champion of the mission in 
all discussions. During the hour of recreation after 
meals a group of theologians gathered daily on one 
of the stair-cases, and dubbed itself " The Hon- 
duras Club." Stanton was its president. It was a 
very jolly group, made up of men of keen wit; and 
its chatter was often uproarious. Everything Hon- 
duranean was debated, burlesqued, attacked and de- 
fended. " Letters from the front " were read 
aloud, plans were made in wild grotesque or mock 
serious. It was all great fun : for Stanton it masked 
the serious interest of his real life's purpose. 

His task during these years was to study scien- 
tific theology. There were two theological courses, 



64 WILLIAM STANTON 

one more elaborate than the other, and at that time 
requiring four years where the other took but three, 
(though since then, by Papal decree, both courses 
are of four years duration). Whether one studied 
" the long course " or " the short course " in the- 
ology was not left to the choice of the individual; 
it was determined by his superiors on the basis of 
his scientific bent and talent as shown chiefly by his 
success or failure in the preceding philosophical 
studies. Stanton was entered at the beginning in 
the long course, the four years of theology with 
rather a severe program of studies. 

Now a knowledge of theology is extremely im- 
portant for a priest, even if he be to work amongst 
ignorant peoples in a mission. Stanton knew this, 
and was honestly set upon getting a good hold upon 
the science. However, both courses offered oppor- 
tunity for that essential understanding of Catholic 
truth; the difference between them being only a 
difference of refinement and subtilety in the discus- 
sion of mooted and abstract points of doctrine. 
For him, the practical difference was that in the 
long course his time would be wholly taken up in the 
niceties of a science which, for all its necessity to 
him, was not his specialty ; whereas in the less elab- 
orate course he could, whilst getting a more than 



LOOKING FORWARD 65 

adequate training in theology, find leisure to carry 
on other studies of great value for his work, espe- 
cially the study of Spanish and Maya. It did not 
take him long to decide that he really had no busi- 
ness in the long course, and he straightway asked 
his provincial superior (as it was quite proper for 
him to ask) that he might be transferred to the 
other class. However, his superior refused his re- 
quest, giving him only the comfort of a hint at the 
law which ordained that a long course student who 
failed in the examination in any year should there- 
after continue his studies in the short course. The 
hint was not lost, as events show. In the meantime 
Stanton gathered his books around him — not with- 
out moaning — and solemnly read theology. 

But these were dreary days. His text-books were 
as ashes in his mouth. The drill-like routine of 
student life fretted him, as it has fretted thousands 
before and after him. Life in a city, with its aw- 
ful burden of clean collars and blacked shoes and 
etiquetical clothing when one went abroad, was hor- 
rible to him. The smoke and dust and noise of his 
surroundings drove him back in fancy to the quiet 
South, with its clean trade-winds blowing across the 
sea and the sleepy land. He dreamed like a school- 
boy, and chafed like a school-boy, and scowled at 



66 WILLIAM STANTON 

his books. But he could laugh at himself, as a 
school-boy cannot; and he had a vision of a hard 
life after the years of school that was bright as a 
star and very comforting. 

His letters of this period are whimsically, hu- 
morously plaintive. He hates his surroundings and 
grimaces at them. Even the relief of letters is half 
denied him, since by the rule his letters to other 
Jesuits must be in Latin — horrible thought! It 
was only on greater feasts that the theologians might 
write letters in English. Here is one to his succes- 
sor in Belize. It is dated September 17, 1899, some 
two weeks after classes had begun, and is a hodge- 
podge of barbaric Latin, Spanish, and English : 

" Frater in Xto Carissime: Jam jam incepit ordo 
regularis in Sancti Ludovici Universitate, et igitur in 
multis difficultatibus in epistolis longis scribendis me 
invenio. O me miserum! Tamen conabor meipsum 
exprimere quam optime possim. Proinde te rogo, ne 
respicias errores meae latinitatis, sed attendas ad ea 
quae vole dicere. 

" Muchas gracias para la ultima carta tuya y para 
el photo. No me gustaba oir del cambio del D . . . 
a Corozal, pero espero y creo yo que antes mucho 
tiempo todas estas cosas en Belize sean bien arre- 
gladas. 

" Ahora de negocios. Ne obliviscaris my instru- 
ments. The crucifix is mine. In the same drawer, if 



LOOKING FORWARD 67 

I mistake not, I left my only decent razor et nescio 
quae alia. Potes rogare hermano Miguel si non potest 
inveniri. Hie enim non apparet in meo trunk. 

" Vellem scribere nunc de multis aliis rebus, sed 
necesse est esperar donee ' licet scribere anglice.' 
Sum ego quasi sepultus intra quatuor muros albos, 
circumdatus fumo, pulvere, calore, libris magnis theo- 
logicis, viis electricis, et omnibus generibus strepituum 
obnoxiorum. Oh ! for a few whiffs of pure sea breeze, 
or even upriver swamps! Timeo ne vigor mens to- 
taliter evanescit ante conclusionem meorum studiorum 
theolog. 

" Sed in manibus Dei sumus. 

" Al fin, hermano mio, hagame el favor de tirar en 
la caja algunos libros viejos espanoles, to fill up space, 
e.g., Gramatica de la Leng. Cast, (the Academy's), 
or any old thing at all. I'm starving for Spanish. 

" Tempus f ugit. Hasta el proximo ' licet anglice.' 
Adios, adios. 

Tuus in Xto." 

Life in St. Louis was only an interlude for him 
now, and decidedly in a minor key at that. Not 
that he was gloomy or morose : not at all. No man 
in the house of studies was cheerier or a better com- 
panion. Nor was it an assumed cheeriness, the 
rather painful sort worn in public on strict grounds 
of virtue. It was part of his temperament to be 
cheerful, the result of native good-humor and good 
sense as well as of deliberate principle; it belonged 
to his characteristic mental poise. But it was cheer- 



68 WILLIAM STANTON 

fulness in despite of his environment, not because of 
it. He had the healthy impatience that goes with a 
definite purpose in life, he was intolerant because 
he had become energetic. And all this was aeons 
away from the dawdling Stanton of his philosophy 
days. On October 15, 1899, he writes again to his 
Belize correspondent, this time in English : 

** Many thanks for your kind and interesting letters 
and photos. I feel renewed life in me when I receive 
even the least thing which has ever been under the 
bright skies of my adopted country. My interest in 
Belize has increased tenfold since my departure, and 
even the slightest items about the college, museum, or 
anything else will be most acceptable. . . . Gee whiz ! 
how I would enoy a pull up to the Haulover or a 
plunge in the sea ! But here is an eternal sit." 

In the meantime he had an eye open for any 
" specimens " to be found round about St. Louis. 
His walks always took him promptly out of the city, 
into the open country where one might come upon 
beetles, snakes, shells, wild flowers. Soon his room 
was littered with an omnium gatherum of such 
things, which, as he said, " were pleasant to look at, 
and helped to cover up the text-books on theology." 
He even acquired a few live snakes, little fellows, to 
be sure, and not such interesting companions as his 
Honduranean wowlahs. Now and then there was 



LOOKING FORWARD 69 

considerable commotion along his corridor and some 
wild, promiscuous hurling of books, shoes, and 
lighter articles of furniture, when one of Stanton's 
snakes strolled out of his room for a promenade. 
Some of the more nervous brethren used to speak 
their minds freely to him after stepping on a snake 
in the dark corridor, but Stanton just grinned and 
promised to lecture his pets. 

He still kept on too with his notes on the " Fauna 
of British Honduras," the material for his ill-fated 
book. On January 21, 1900, he writes to Belize: 

**. . . Concerning my notes on the reptiles, I may 
say that I have finished not only the reptiles (includ- 
ing also turtles, crocodiles, and lizards), but also the 
molluscs and the Crustacea. But I must go over them 
again, as I think there are a few points still to be at- 
tended to. Then I must finish the echini, coelenterates, 
and perhaps the mammals. I thought I might have 
things ready to send by this box, but I am sure by the 
next one everything will be in order. I have taken 
up all the species named in our museum, together with 
a few explanatory remarks concerning the different 
families to which they belong. Don't forget, when- 
ever you have any more specimens identified, to send 
me the names, so that I may be able to add them to my 
own list for my personal information. . . . 

" Life about the scholasticate is quiet and unevent- 
ful; the only element of excitement being those de- 
lightful! ! ! circles — especially when you yourself are 



70 WILLIAM STANTON 

on, which happens now about every other week. We 
have one ' walk of obligation ' — i.e., Thursday morn- 
ings. This is about the only time I ever leave the 
house. Our big cities have lost all their attraction 
for me, if ever they had any. The brethren here know 
me as ' Honduras Bill ' or * Honduras Buck ' ; not very 
euphonious names, to be sure ! " 

Honduras is the note of every letter. It is 
strangely persistent. His mission seems to have 
got into the fibres of the man. It dominates all his 
thought, like a " fixed idea." Time does not dull 
his interest in it, nor can any occupation take his 
mind from it. Almost two years after he had left 
Belize, he writes : 

** Thanks for the interesting description of your 
trip to Northern River. Such letters come like a gleam 
of golden Belize sunshine, like the bright waters that 
roll lazily over the painted coral gardens and break 
with delightful music upon the sparkling sands beside 
our tropic sea. I forget for a moment the cold leaden 
skies of Missouri and the smoke-defiled air of St. 
Louis, and live again amid the winding streams with 
deep green borders of mangrove, waving palms, poke- 
no-boys, and fiowering orchids. . . . 

'* When you write again, please let me know whether 
the village and church at Maskell's Bank are on the 
northern or southern side of the river, as I am making 
a large map of the mission with all the churches, 
chapels, and stations marked, and I wish to make it 
as exact as possible." 



LOOKING FORWARD 71 

Yet one must not get the notion that these years 
in St. Louis are just a time of empty sighing, of 
dawdling over dilettante work in natural history. 
Scientific, dogmatic theology took comparatively lit- 
tle of his time, it is true; and at the end of his first 
year he gracefully failed in examination and passed 
over, with no regrets, to the peaceful shades of the 
short course. But he had not really shirked his 
work in theology, and though he had no enthusiasm 
for it, he did not let this lack of enthusiasm leave 
him empty-handed when he had finished his study. 
One branch, moreover, moral theology, he studied 
with decided interest and more than passable suc- 
cess. That, of course, was quite indispensable to 
him as a priest; and all Stanton's ambitions were 
priestly, not scientific. If he dreamed of the tropi- 
cal mission, in his heart it was of the people in it, 
of his work for them; though his lips might speak 
only of its fauna and flora. Where he chafed under 
the work of study was only where the study was of 
little profit for the very practical end he had in 
view. Another part of his equipment as a priest in 
the mission was his knowledge of languages. At 
that too he worked very hard. He read a great 
deal of Spanish, and eagerly used every opportunity 
of speaking it. He continued the study of Maya, 



j2 WILLIAM STANTON 

the Indian language most used in Honduras. On 
March 24, 1901, he writes to BeHze : 

". . . You need not fear that I have given up hope 
of the Maya. I have managed to gather together, 
whilst in the Colony and since, from various sources, 
a Maya-English vocabulary of over 3,500 words, which 
I have just arranged in alphabetical order, and which 
may come in handy in the future. In vacation I in- 
tend to fix up a little Maya grammar with English 
text, for myself, seeing that nothing of the kind has 
yet been done by Fr. M. ... If only I had a chance 
to spend the vacation months in the mission, e.g., with 
M ... or some one else in the north of the Colony, 
I am sure something of permanent utility in this mat- 
ter could be accomplished — but — I am still only a 
young scholastic, you know. When I first returned 
I had hopes that I might be given a chance of acquir- 
ing Spanish at least, but I have given up those hopes 
now, as the fates seem to have decreed otherwise. 
I hope that those who come after me may be more 
fortunate in this respect. I am thoroughly convinced, 
however, that until young fathers are sent to the mis- 
sion, fully equipped with Spanish beforehand, little can 
be accomplished, at least outside the city of Belize. . . . 

" What a dread there seems to be of Belize up here 
in the province ! The cry is now, * The Philippines ! 
They ought to give us the Philippines ! ' Before the 
war, ' we shouldn't have Belize, bcause we have too 
much work in our own province and cannot spare men 
for that old hole.* But now we ought to get the Philip- 
pines — which would require fifty men or more! ! 
Strange, isn't it? . . , 



LOOKING FORWARD 73 

*' Tell your Rev. Superior that I am very thankful 
for his kind offers concerning the Cayo, and tell him 
that, in the rush for the mission during the next two 
years, I hope I shall not be cut out of a job. When 
Fr. Algue passed through here on his return to the 
Philippines, he put in a request for me to the Pro- 
vincial, to have me go to Manila; but of course I 
couldn't think of deserting Honduras, my first love.'* 

But the question of the Philippines, so lightly 
dismissed in his letter, was not one for him to settle. 
Father Algue's request was strongly urged upon 
Stanton's superiors and was being seriously consid- 
ered, though at the time nothing more was said to 
Stanton. He himself seems to have put the matter 
quite out of his mind, indeed not to have been con- 
cerned about it at all. The spring and early sum- 
mer passed with no further reference to it. His 
thoughts were as busy as ever about his mission, 
were following the life and work of the men there. 
Spring in the States is the close of the dry season in 
Honduras, the hottest time of the year, when schools 
are closed and the teachers get away for a holiday. 
They went to the northern part of the colony that 
May, up near the Mexican border. Stanton is all 
keenness, as eager as if he were still back in the 
mission. In a letter of May 6, he writes : 

" What is the latest regarding the Mexican cam- 



74 WILLIAM STANTON 

paign against the Santa Cruz? How will the result 
affect the northern districts of the Colony? You will 
probably have a good chance to add to the collections 
during the month. Tigers are said to be rather com- 
mon between Corozal and Consejo. Hope you and 

O'L have a chance to drop a few. Any beetles 

or other such insects which you may come across you 
might throw into a bottle of formalin and bring up 
with you. Try to get a good photo at close range of a 
wee-wee nest, and one of the termite nest (comejen)." 

Summer drew to its height in St. Louis. June 
saw the usual examinations, the closing of classes, 
the flitting for the holidays. The villas in Wiscon- 
sin were overcrowded. Thirty or forty of the 
scholastics had to seek elsewhere for a place to spend 
the summer. A score of them, including Stanton, 
were sent to the college at St. Mary's, Kansas, some 
four hundred miles west of St. Louis. The boys 
of the college had, of course, gone home; so there 
was plenty of room in their dormitories. The little 
group of theologians had gone through the annual 
eight days in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, 
and the time of vacation was nearing its end, with 
the return to St. Louis only a few days off, when 
Stanton received sudden word to go to Manila. 
Here is his letter to Belize telling the news : 

" Don't faint at this bit of news. Here is the text 



LOOKING FORWARD 75 

of a short letter I had from Fr. Provincial two days 
ago: 

"'Dear Mr. Stanton: The consultors and myself 
have concluded to send you to the Philippines, to Man- 
ila, at the request of Fr. Algue and the Provincial of 
Arragon. As you have no course at the University that 
you can follow in class next year, you may make your 
third year of theology in Manila and be ordained 
there. You will thus get a chance of learning Span- 
ish. They ask for some one for two or three years. 
You will thus be better fitted for Honduras. (Under- 
lining my own.) Perhaps you can make your tertian- 
ship there too. Of this I am not so certain. About 
your time of departure I know nothing yet, but I do 
not think it will be long before you start.' 

" Talk about your surprises ! They are all guying 
me now about ' shaking ' Belize — ' pulling on ' poor 
victims for BeHze, so that I could sneak out of the 
blessed hole myself. But never fear, old boy, I shan't 
go back on my first love. Til be ready for the * bush ' 
when I have finished my tertianship, if the Lord spares 
me so long. 

" What messages does * el Padre vie jo ' wish me to 
bring to his old friends in the Philippines? Tell him 
I have begun to brush up all the Spanish swear words 
and curses he taught me in Belize, so as to be prop- 
erly equipped to instruct the youthful Filipinos. Now 
I hear him — ' Canastos ! caspita hombre ! que tonter- 
ias ! ese muchacho ! ! ! ' " 

It is very Jesuit, this letter. He is astonished; 
his plans are upset; practically without warning he 



76 WILLIAM STANTON 

is packed off to a foreign field, half a world away 
from where he expected to be. Yet not only is 
there no expression of complaint or protest, but you 
are aware that there is not even a complaint sup- 
pressed. In perfect good-humor, in a most matter- 
of-fact way, he simply states and accepts the facts. 
It is a clean about-face, but he does not even change 
his stride. Oh, he is still going back to Honduras 
soine day; Manila is only a detour, so to speak. 
But when one is all set on a goal, even a detour 
might entitle one to protest. Apparently, however, 
the mere idea of this has simply not occurred to 
Stanton. He is not deserting Honduras; his su- 
periors have sent him away. So that's all right. 
It's really their funeral: he is only riding in the 
hearse. He came back to St. Louis, packed his 
trunk, gave away his snakes, and was in San Fran- 
cisco by the end of the month. 



CHAPTER VI 

Now-a-days, when travel has become so common 
that a little jaunt to Thibet hardly furnishes matter 
for a drawing-room conversation, it may be thought 
a bore to set before a reader Stanton's letters on his 
voyage to the Far East. However, they are not 
offered as " travelogues " or pretentious bits of 
descriptive writing. Their value for us is an indi- 
rect portrayal of their writer; the man shows him- 
self in his letters, unconsciously, yet clearly enough 
to the discerning. To that purpose we shall let 
this chapter be a cluster of citations from his letters. 
Besides, if any one does not wish to read them, he 
may just skip the whole chapter. 

Stanton went out to Manila as an assistant in the 
Observatory conducted by the Jesuits there and 
lately become a part of the United States Govern- 
ment service; hence as a Government employee he 
was entitled to passage on one of the U. S. trans- 
ports. He arrived in San Francisco just in time 
to miss a sailing, and had a delay in consequence of 
some two weeks, which he put in visiting some of 

17 



78 WILLIAM STANTON 

the old mission places of California. His jottings 
take up from the day of departure. 

'* U. S. Transport Warren, Honolulu, Hawaiian Ty., 
Sept. 26, 1901. 

" Monday morning, the i6th, after running down 
town to make my last purchases of a few books and 
a little burning material for the voyage, I returned to 
the college and took leave of my friends there. Fr. 
Testa, who had been very kind during my stay in man- 
aging all business connected with my voyage, accom- 
panied me to the steamer. We left the wharf promptly 
at noon, and stood out through the Golden Gate in a 
raw, misty, cold breeze. Everything about the bay 
looked cold and gloomy — real San Francisco 
weather, so far as I could judge by my two weeks' 
stay. 

" We have about 160 passengers aboard, made up 
of army and navy officers, school teachers, Protestant 
ministers, army chaplains, army nurses, veterinary 
surgeons, wives of officers and soldiers, babies, etc. 
We had scarcely started when I was accosted by a 
portly, rather young, and pompous-looking individ- 
ual in the uniform of an army chaplain, who intro- 
duced himself as Chaplain N from some town 

in Texas. He asked me if I were not Chaplain 
Steele of the 21st Infantry. Shortly after, I found, 
to my astonishment, that my room-mate was none 
other than the aforesaid Steele, a good, business-like 
fellow. The Quartermaster doubtless thought that 
the preachers ought to get along well together, and 
so we do, though it is rather an amusing combina- 
tion. . . . 



LETTERS 79 

" At table I have been assigned a place beside the 
Captain, with the two ministers below me, the first 
mate at the foot, whilst three army officers and one 
lady occupy the remaining seats. So you see the 
wild Carib from the bush is being most courteously 
treated aboard the Warren. 

" Third day out, breeze very mild, but clouds hid 
the sun all day, sea quite smooth. 

" Thursday, 19th, the sky was clear all day. Balmy 
breezes came up from the south, reminding me of 
the sunny paradise beside the Caribbean, for which 
our friend ' tin twinty ' is so eagerly preparing. 
. . . At 10:30 A.M. we had memorial services for 

the President, in the saloon, with Chaplain N 

presiding. All the ladies and officers were present, 
the latter in full uniform. After the singing of the 
national anthem, and an improvised prayer by the 
other chaplain, the presiding one made an introduc- 
tory speech. Then Col. Fechet was called upon, as 
representing the Army. The next number on the 
program was an address by Fr. Stanton. The last- 
named gentleman had tried to get out of the per- 
formance, but under the circumstances that could not 
be done very gracefully, so he ventured a few re- 
marks on the right understanding of the principle 
of human liberty and the Catholic doctrine on the prin- 
ciple of authority. He thought it a good chance to 
recall a few fundamental truths to minds which rarely 
dwell on such matters. Other speakers followed. Fr. 
S. was naturally wondering what effect his remarks 
had on his audience. One of the chief officers on 
board came up afterwards and complimented him 
on having touched on a phase of the question which 



8o WILLIAM STANTON 

had been altogether overlooked by the other speakers. 
There was something soHd in that, he said. So. Fr. 
S. felt that at least he had not made such a thunder- 
ing big fool of himself. 

" Friday, Sept. 20. Typical tropical morning, 
smooth sea, pleasant breeze, scattered clouds, oc- 
casional light showers. New faces still appearing 
from time to time on deck; though by now all seem 
to have got their sea-legs and people are becoming 
well acquainted with each other. The chaplains got 
up a spelling-bee in the evening, good fun for a while. 
Later, adjourned to the after deck and had some fair 
singing from ladies and young gentlemen. Some fine 
voices aboard. Strange to say, there is no instrumen- 
tal music aboard but that of an accordion, which one 
of the sailors manipulates. 

" Before turning in for the night, I watched the 
phosphorescent gleamings of the marine organisms, 
as the ship plowed through the waves, leaving a trail 
of fire after her. Straight in the path before us, a 
dense black cloud hung sweeping down to the horizon ; 
a crescent moon crept out above its rim, and spilled a 
flood of silver light upon the sea. 

"Sat. 2 1 St. Glorious morning; sea calm and oily, 
nothing but the long, heaving swells and the plowing 
of the ship to disturb its surface. Flying fish like 
darts of silver leap from the sea and shoot through 
the air, sometimes for a hundred yards distance. 

" In the evening Chaplain N brought the sailor 

with the accordion for a httle music. Scarcely had 
the thing started, when the feet of the young people 
began to feel very light, and in a moment half a 
dozen couples were doing the light fantastic with a 



LETTERS 8i 

gusto. An improvised cake walk soon succeeded, and 
things became quite gay; every one but the chaplain 
enjoying himself immensely. The latter is a strict 
Methodist and much averse to dancing, and seeing that 
he had been the cause of the levity by bringing up the 
accordion, he felt quite discomfited. Turning to me, he 
said in his slow, southern drawl, ' Well, now, I didn't 
foresee such a turn of events ! ' He had to stand a 
good deal of teasing from his friends. Afterwards we 
got one of the coon waiters up, and you should have 
seen him pound that deck and twist his legs into bow 
knots! We clapped that nigger up till he could 
scarcely stand any longer. 

" Sun. 22nd. Fine breeze — in the trade winds — 
more flying fish. Protestants held services at 10:30 
A. M. Had a great chat with the first mate, Griffiths, 
a Welshman, a regular weather-beaten sea-dog, and a 
big-hearted old fellow. The Captain of the vessel 
is an Australian and most of the sailors are Welshmen, 
with a good sprinkling of Irishmen. 

" Tues. 23d. The welcome sight of land to our left 
greeted us at six a. m. It was the island of Molokai, 
the scene of the heroic sacrifice of Father Damien. 
By noon the mountain peaks of Oahu loomed up to 
our right, and the decks became crowded. 

"... I have an engagement to go out to the Pali in 
a few moments, so must put off any further scratch- 
ings till later. 

U. S. Trans. Warren, Oct. 8, 1901. 
" Still sailing over the deep — not a sail or sign of 
human life outside of our own ship since we left 
Honolulu ten days ago. I think I left you last in 



S2 WILLIAM STANTON 

sight of Oahu. Well, let me inflict some more Ha- 
waiian jottings which I hope to send off by the first 
mail that leaves Manila after my arrival. 

" How we did cheer up at sight of those beautiful 
islands ! About noon of Tuesday, 24th, we were quite 
close to the red and purple volcanic masses, against 
the base of which the noisy breakers dashed their 
feathery crests. The side of the island first approached 
appears rather barren of vegetation, but on turning 
the first point the scene changes. Straight ahead is 
seen a bold promontory, called Diamond Head, near 
the base of which is the light-house. Between the 
first point and Diamond Head stretches a large bay, 
with green mountainsides rising behind, coconut 
palms fringing the shore, picturesque clusters of native 
huts peeping from their green surroundings. Here 
and there the volcanic rocks reach right down to the 
sea and are hollowed out into fantastic caverns by the 
surf. Passing Diamond Head, we came in sight of a 
faery scene, the lovely Waikiki beach, the perpetual 
summer resort for the residents of Honolulu. Qiarm- 
ing cottages embowered in tropical foliage line the 
shore. Behind them the mountains rose, an infinite 
variety of green and purple up to the very peaks. 
These latter were wrapped in swaying and changing 
masses of clouds, swift-moving, mysterious, from 
which showers broke here and there. Bright villas 
perched high up on the hillsides. Off to the left a 
few wreaths of smoke from tall chimneys showed the 
location of Honolulu itself. 

" As we steamed into the harbour, the boat was sur- 
rounded by a crowd of young Kanakas, whose lithe 
velvety limbs gleamed in the blue waters. They were 



LETTERS 83 

soon diving for the coins which the passengers threw 
overboard. And such diving! As soon as a coin 
struck the water, down went heads and arms, and for 
a moment nothing was seen but a confused tangle of 
gHstening legs disappearing gradually into the depths. 
But before long up came the smiling faces, and in 
the waving hand of one the coin glistened securely. 
This went into the mouth of the successful little diver, 
and all were ready for another turn. 

*' We made the wharf at 4 130, and found it crowded 
with magnificent Kanakas, broad-shouldered and pow- 
erful-looking fellows, but spoiled of their poetry by 
their barbarous modern garments. As we had an hour 
before dinner, I took a stroll through the business part 
of town. Most of the shops and the streets seemed to 
be in possession of the Chinese and Japs, all in their 
native costume. Got back to ship at 6:30 and had 
dinner. After dinner we made a party to go out to 
Waikiki and take a surf bath by moonlight. About 
thirty of us took the horse cars near the wharf. 
Waikiki is about three miles from Honolulu, and the 
ride along the beautiful road by moonlight was quite 
delightful. At times the odor of tube-roses and other 
flowers was overpowering in its sweetness. We 
stopped at the Hawaiian Hotel Annex, a large, neat 
bathing establishment, where towels and bathing suits 
were secured for a trifle. In a few moments I stepped 
out on the moonlit sands and thanked God for the 
W-aikiki beach, the world-famed. The rolling, rush- 
ing breakers burst in a mass of foam on the silvery 
sands at my feet. The next instant, the refreshing 
waters closed over the more or less supple limbs of 
Buck Stanton. What a lelief after being cramped up 



84 WILLIAM STANTON 

in a ship for over a week! And what undignified 
somersaults some of our party did turn, when the swift, 
foaming breakers caught them where they lived and 
rolled them over on the beach, a tangle of arms, legs 
and bathing suits, and then, before they could scramble 
to their feet, slid them back again into the water, just 
in time to be caught by the next one. These rollers 
beat Stann Creek all hollow ! 

" Without knowing it, I made quite a hit on this oc- 
casion. My companion to the beach was a young offi- 
cer, a graduate of Pennsylvania, of a strapping ath- 
letic build. We swam out beyond the crowd, and he 
proposed that we stretch our limbs in a little race to 
the diving platform, some hundred and fifty yards 
away. He swam well, but I left him far in the rear, 
much to his surprise. He complimented me on my 
stroke, and expressed his astonishment that the * Pa- 
dre' (my usual appellation on board) could swim so 
well. I gave no further thought to the occurrence, 
but the day following he insisted that we should take 
another dip by daylight. This time a young naval offi- 
cer accompanied us, a man of gigantic frame. When 
we came out on the veranda overhanging the beach, we 
found nearly all the passengers of the Warren, and a 
good part of the crew, scattered about in knots, as if 
awaiting something of interest. I heard the word 
' Padre ' mentioned now and aga'in, and began to won- 
der what was up. The three of us were soon in the 
waves, and, as I had begun to suspect, we were to have 
another race, but this time some quarter of a mile. 
I was in for anything in that line, though when I 
looked at the huge muscularity of the naval officer, I 
knew I was up against the real thing. However, 



LETTERS 85 

thought I, I'll have the exercise at any rate. I saw 
now the object of the crowds on the veranda. 

" Off we started, observed of all observers. The 
naval man shot out from the line like a cannon ball, 
but before he had gone fifty yards I was with him 
neck and neck, and at the goal found him more than 
fifty feet in the rear. When he climbed up on the 
platform, he caught my hand and congratulated me, 
and said : ' Padre, I've raced against dozens of first- 
class swimmers in the east, many of them with big 
reputations, and have never been beaten until this 
moment. I'll be hanged if I ever saw such a power- 
ful overhand stroke in my life. Let me look at your 
arm and hand.' He held up his brawny arm along- 
side of mine. ' Well,' said he, * I can't understand it ! 
My hand and arm would make three of yours, and 
yet I can't come near that stroke of yours.' 

" I then learned that talk about the preceding day's 
swim had stirred up excitement amongst crew and pas- 
sengers, and they had chosen their best man to swim 
with the Padre that afternoon. When I saw how 
things stood, I said to myself, ^ Well, here's another 
score for the Honduras Club! The old H. C. is in it 
yet ! Why, it is getting known away over here in the 
middle of the Pacific ! ' 

'* We dined at the hotel, and when we returned to the 
ship, after another moonlight bath, it was quite late 
— or rather early — in the morning. 

" We stayed in port from Tuesday afternoon till 
Friday morning, and you may be sure I made the 
most of that time. What are my impressions of 
Honolulu? Well, old man, it surpasses anything I 
have ever seen, or hope to see. The Islands have been 



86 WILLIAM STANTON 

well called the paradise of the Pacific. The city, out- 
side of the few business streets, is a veritable tropical 
botanical garden. Every house is surrounded by lux- 
uriant palms of divers kinds. The hedges are mostly 
stephanotis, and at the Kamehameha school there is a 
hedge, three hundred yards long, of the night-bloom- 
ing cereus, with thousands of its huge blossoms scat- 
tering their overpowering fragrance on the moonlit 
night. All the streets are wonderfully smooth and 
clean, making fine bicycle roads. It is a curious sight 
to see dozens of Chinese flying down the street on a 
wheel, pigtail standing out behind. All the women 
here, apparently, ride horseback astride; not once did 
I see one riding otherwise. 

" The native Kanakas now seem lost in the crowd of 
Orientals and Americans. It is said the land is now 
nearly all owned by the foreigners, many of them mis- 
sionaries, who came here and civilized the natives out 
of their possessions and finally off the face of the earth. 
In the midst of this earthly paradise, the hospitable, 
kind-hearted, gentle native Hawaiian is now a stranger 
in the land, robbed of all he had, and dying ofiF rapidly 
of diseases, before unknown, which the white man 
brought to his once happy isles. 

" Living seems to be rather high in Honolulu, at 
least for strangers. One of our passengers paid three 
dollars for a breakfast of coffee, beefsteak, and pota- 
toes; another paid thirty-five cents for two boiled 
eggs, and twenty-five cents for lemonade. But I sup- 
pose strangers are easy prey for the Japs and Chinese 
who run all the shops. We all finally concluded to 
take our meals aboard, else we were afraid we should 
be bankrupt before we left the town. 



LETTERS 87 

" Whilst strolling through the town, I found some 
exquisite Protestant churches, of all denominations, 
but could not spy the Catholic church. I called a cab, 
and we were there in five minutes. The church is 
very modest in its exterior, compared with its Prot- 
estant neighbours, but the interior is beautifully dec- 
orated. From the church I went to the residence of 
the Bishop near-by and introduced myself. He speaks 
English quite well, and we were soon at home with 
each other. Seven or eight priests were in the house 
at the time, and others came the same day. They 
were gathering for their annual retreat. France, Bel- 
gium, Germany, and Holland are represented amongst 
them. Several are old Jesuit boys from Turnhout. 
I dined with them, and enjoyed a good smoke and 
chat afterward. As the day happened to be the anni- 
versary of the Bishop's consecration, there was exposi- 
tion all day in the church, and I had a chance to listen 
to the mellifluous Hawaiian language as the natives 
said their prayers aloud before the Blessed Sacrament. 

*' After supper on board ship, I returned to the 
church for solemn benediction. It was a beautiful 
sight. The church was crowded to overflowing, the 
music was good, and the devotion of the natives was 
impressive. After benediction I had another smoke 
and chat v/ith the missionaries, and passed a very 
pleasant hour. Next morning I had a chance for 
confession. Mass, and Communion. During the day 
I made an excursion up the volcano behind the city, 
and gathered some specimens of lava; took another 
turn at the beach; and after dinner got off some 
letters. 

" At six o'clock promptly, next morning, we left 



88 WILLIAM STANTON 

the wharf on our long three weeks' stretch. I re- 
gretted that I had not at least a few weeks in beauti- 
ful Honolulu. Beyond any doubt, there is a witching 
attractiveness in this garden of the Pacific. 

" During the first two days out from Honolulu I 
felt a little uncomfortable and lost my appetite, but 
was not what one would call sick. Now I am all 
right, but the voyage is beginning to seem very long. 

". . . Last Saturday Chaplain S informed me 

that I was expected to conduct ' the Sabbath service 
to-morrow.' I told him kindly that I would resign 
in his favour. This did not satisfy him. In the 
morning, he said I must officiate, all were expecting 
me, the ladies especially were most anxious to hear 
me, etc., etc. I explained to him as politely as possi- 
ble that I would conduct all my ser^aces privately, and 
that if there was to be any public service he or the 
other chaplain would have to carry it on. As a matter 
of fact there was no service, though many of the ladies 
did come and assured me they would be ' so dehghted ' 
if I would give the Sabbath address. But Buck Stan- 
ton told them just as suavely that he would conduct 
no such service, so the Sunday passed without it. A 
heavy squall struck the vessel in the afternoon, and 
many of the passengers passed the rest of the day in 
the privacy of their cabins. 

" Sat. Oct. I2th. The weather for the last few days 
has been very warm and close — air full of moisture. 
Everything in the cabins damp, especially my smoking 
tobacco, which I had to put out in the sun to dry, else 
I should have had to wring the water out of it before 
smoking. Light attire is the order of the day. Many 
of the gentlemen on board get out on deck in the early 



LETTERS 89 

hours before the women are supposed to be up, and 
have the sailors turn the big fire hose on them by way 
of a shower bath. They have lots of fun over their 
morning bath, especially the sailors. The attire of the 
bonton ladies aboard during these warm days is more 
varied in style, but not more extensive, than that of 
many of my Honduras lady friends. I myself run 
about very modestly clothed, though decidedly neglige ; 
but at meals the gentlemen are all supposed to appear 
in coats, whereas the ladies — well, they dispense with 
theirs. 

" Oct. 15. Last night we came in sight of the long 
looked for Philippines. On our left the bold outlines 
of Cape Engano loomed up out of the mist about 4 :oo 
P.M. How we did rejoice at the sight! We went 
down to dinner at 5 130 in good spirits, but when we 
came on deck after the meal the sea and sky looked 
rather ominous. Soon a driving rain set in, accom- 
panied by a terrific wind. The seas broke over the 
deck, and we crouched about in odd corners looking for 
protection, for it was too stuffy to go below. We were 
in the entrance of the China Sea, right in the path of 
the typhoons and during the usual typhoon month. 
Just on our right two high rocky peaks jutted out of 
the waves, marking the spot where the ill-fated Charles- 
ton went down last year. As night drew on, instead 
of continuing on our course the captain turned right 
about into the teeth of the wind and beat up and down 
in front of the lighthouse all night. At 2 :oo a. m. the 
force of the wind abated, and we once more turned to 
our course, and the Warren went boldly into the China 
Sea. We awoke this morning in full view of the 
beautiful mountainous northern Luzon. The tops of 



90 WILLIAM STANTON 

the peaks and the valleys along their sides were 
shrouded in rolling clouds. When I stepped out of 
my cabin, I found the water about a foot deep on the 
deck ; and the rolling of the ship was slopping the water 
right over the high threshold, soaking the floor of the 
cabin and wetting my bag and books on the floor. The 
sky remained cloudy all day, and the wind fresh. We 
expected to get into Manila to-morrow morning, but 
on account of our little storm we shall not get in until 
late to-morrow evening, and consequently shall not get 
to s:hore before Thursday morning. But at last our 
thirty-one days' sea voyage is about over. 

" Oct. 1 6, 5 :oo p. M. Just getting into Manila Bay, 
passing Corregidor Island. The Transport Sheridan 
is coming out, and we can send our mail — no time to 
lose — may be two weeks till next chance. So good- 
bye. Regards to all the brethren." 



CHAPTER VII 

Stanton, when he left St. Louis, had still a year of 
theology to do before he would be ordained. He 
was to get through this year by private study, as best 
he could. The work that took up most of his time, 
however, was in the Observatory, where a better 
knowledge of English was needed than any of the 
Spanish Jesuits in Manila at that time possessed. 
The meteorological work of the Observatory was of 
immense importance. It issued weather forecasts, 
notably warnings of the dangerous typhoons, which 
of course had to be put into English for the benefit 
of American and British skippers. But perhaps it 
is better to let Stanton reveal himself further and 
speak for himself of his impressions of Manila and 
of conditions in the Islands and of what his work 
there was. The following extracts are from letters 
to a class-mate in St. Louis. 

" Observatorio de Manila, November 21, 1901. 
" Dear Old Man : I think I left you in Manila Bay, 
as we were steaming past historic Corregidor, with the 
U. S. Transport Sheridan just starting on her home- 

91 



92 WILLIAM STANTON 

ward voyage and waiting for whatever mail we had to 
send. . . . After wishing the Sheridan a safe journey 
homeward, we started directly across the Bay for 
Manila, twenty-seven miles distant. To our right we 
saw the famous Cavite and the position of the un- 
fortunate Spanish ships, the skeletons of which are 
still to be seen rising above the waves. Darkness came 
on very suddenly, and when we anchored at 7 :oo p. m. 
nothing could be seen but the glimmering lights of 
Manila, three miles away. We all heaved a sigh of 
relief that our long voyage was at an end. 

** We did not get ashore, however, until about 10 130 
next morning, Thursday, Nov. 17. There is no pier 
as yet, so we were taken ashore in the quartermaster's 
steam launch. The view of the city from the Bay is 
really beautiful; the many churches and conventual 
buildings are very imposing, and the grand driveway 
stretching along the water-front, with its avenues of 
coconut palms, makes a most charming foreground. A 
turn around the breakwater brought us into the mouth 
of the Pasig River ; and then we did have sights ! The 
scene was one of the busiest I have ever witnessed — 
steamers and tugs, barges, native cascos, and smaller 
craft, worked their way up and down the sluggish 
stream. The cascos were swarming with natives of all 
sexes and ages, in every stage of barbaric dress and 
undress ; whilst the wharves were crowded with thou- 
sands of coolies, clad simply in their picturesque wide 
Chinese hats and very short nether garments, and en- 
gaged in loading coal into the barges. The coal was 
carried in baskets swinging from the ends of a bamboo 
pole slung over the bare shoulders. On our right the 
massive walls of the old city loomed up, covered almost 



MANILA 93 

completely with moss and various tropical forms of 
vegetation. We soon pulled into the U. S. Quarter- 
master's wharf on the left. 

'* Immediately on landing I hired a small two- 
wheeled carriage, called a ' carreton/ drawn by a 
diminutive Filipino horse and driven by a cross-eyed 
native. I first enquired in Spanish if he knew where 
the Observatory was, and being answered in the af- 
fimiative, I jumped in and away we went. We drove 
through the crowded business streets, through swarms 
of Chinese and natives, past several drunken Americans 
(noble exponents of Anglo-Saxon civilization in the 
Philippines!), crossed the Puente de Espana and out 
on to the beautiful seaside drive which terminates at 
the historic Luneta. Just beyond the Luneta is the 
suburb Hermita, where the Observatorio is located. 
In a few moments we turned into the Calle de Padre 
Faura, named after Father Faura, S.J., the founder 
of the Observatory, and I saw the roof of the building 
looming up before me. 

" When I came into the spacious entrance, the lay 
brother on duty, taking me for one of the curious 
Americanos who wanted to see the Observatory, was 
about to show me the card on which are printed the 
days and hours for visitors, for this happened not to 
be a visiting day. But when I asked for Fr. Algue, 
he thought I might be on some official business, and 
accordingly showed me up to his office. Fr. A. was 
taken completely by surprise. He knew that I was to 
come, but had no definite idea of the time when I was 
to put in an appearance, and I had not had a chance 
to send word beforehand. He welcomed me most cor- 
dially and introducd me in a few minutes to the rector 



94 WILLIAM STANTON 

and the whole community. I find myself the only 
English-speaking man in the place. Of course Fr. 
Algue speaks English fairly well, and the three scholas- 
tics know a few words, but the entire community is 
Spanish and nearly all are from Catalonia. They seem 
to be very fine fellows and do their best to make the 
poor Americano feel at home ; and they are succeeding 
very well. 

" I should never end, should I attempt to describe all 
the interesting things that have struck me during the 
first few days in Manila ; hence I shall confine myself, 
for the present at least, to a few points concerning our 
communities in the city. We have two communities 
here, quite distinct: one here at the Observatory, the 
other at the Ateneo Municipal, within the walled city, 
where the superior of the mission lives. The Ateneo 
is a college, with over eleven hundred boys, about 370 
of whom are boarders. With perhaps a dozen excep- 
tions, all the boys are native Filipinos or mestizos ; and 
there are 75 native servants employed in the college and 
house. They have a fine museum of natural history, 
containing very complete collections of the fauna, flora, 
and ethnology of the Philippine Islands. The build- 
ings are of three stories and spread over a considerable 
area, with enclosed courts, wide corridors, and very 
thick walls. They are within a stone's throw of the 
beach, and from the upper stories or roofs a magnifi- 
cent view of the Bay is obtainable. Here they had a 
grand-stand view of the manoeuvering of Dewey's 
fleet during the whole performance. Our buildings, 
together with the Augustinian convent adjoining, 
would have made one of the most conspicuous targets 
had the city been bombarded. Owing to the want of 



MANILA 95 

space and the scattered arrangement of the buildings, 
Ours are now thinking of building anew and trans- 
ferring the Ateneo to a more convenient part of the 
city. It is a great sight when classes are over to see 
the vast crowd of young Filipinos surging out from the 
school. 

" Adjoining the Ateneo is our famous church of San 
Ignacio, with its exquisite interior, one mass of won- 
derful wood carving, all done by native Filipinos. 
There is a book with plates in the library at St. Louis 
which describes all the details of this truly grand 
edifice. 

" Here at the Observatory the main building is an 
immense hollow square, one corner of which is devoted 
to the meteorological observatory. The community oc- 
cupies two sides of the quadrangle on the upper floor, 
whilst the rest of the building is devoted to the college, 
which is known as the ' Escuela Normal ' or Normal 
School. There are about 700 boys attending the 
classes, some 200 of whom are boarders. The rooms 
are all large, with high ceilings and very thick walls. 
My own room measures on the inside about 18 x 48 
feet. A very wide and high double door opens out in 
front upon a sort of balcony with sliding blinds. 
Across the road is about as typical a Filipino village 
as one could find anywhere. 

" All around the inner side of the quadrangle runs 
an enclosed corridor or cloister, some 25 or 30 feet 
wide. On the ground floor it is paved with cement, 
making a fine walk ; whilst on the second story the floor 
is of hand polished Filipino mahogany, as are also the 
floors of all our rooms. All the rooms on the ground 
floor are paved with smooth tiles. 



96 WILLIAM STANTON 

*' The gardens or grounds surrounding the building 
cover about ten acres, filled with tropical vegetation. 
The magnetical observatory and astronomical observa- 
tory occupy distinct buildings in the garden. We have 
our own printing, lithographing, and binding establish- 
ment on the grounds. The whole observatory plant 
is one of the best institutions of its kind in the world. 

" Nov. 2^. Since my arrival we have had two 
typhoons which swept across the Islands, one a bit 
north of Manila, the other south. The Manila papers 
say that the former caught the Sheridan — the boat 
carrying my previous letter — and handled her so badly 
that she has had to be laid up for several weeks' re- 
pairs in Nagasaki, whilst the Warren has been de- 
spatched thither to take on to the States her mail and 
as many of the passengers and disabled soldiers as she 
can accommodate. 

"The storm mentioned in my last letter (which we 
encountered around the northern point of Luzon) 
proved to be the outer edge of a typhoon which swept 
across Manila Bay, doing great damage to part of the 
shipping through the negligence of some of our Ameri- 
can captains, who of course ' know all about every- 
thing.' The Observatory had sent them word thirty- 
six hours before the first appearance of the actual 
storm, but they neglected to take precautions until it 
was too late. These wise men will probably heed our 
warnings in the future. 

" And what about the weather ? Well, it has been 
moist, moist, moist, even with the sun shining, but not 
unpleasantly hot. The nights are delightfully cool, 
and the mosquitos have not bothered me — under the 
net. 



MANILA 97 

" We are of course Spanish in our customs here, and 
many of them would sit rather strangely, I imagine, 
upon some of the brethren of the Collegium Maximum 
of St. Louis. However, I think I am catching on 
pretty well, all things considered. I find coat, vest, 
and trousers superfluities. It will not do to go into 
too many particulars ; but I am sure that my old friend 
L would have a fit if he caught sight of me wan- 
dering about the streets of Manila in my Spanish 
cassock, closed in front (for excellent reasons), long 

Spanish mantle (manteo), something like Fr. C 's 

big cloak, only very light and reaching almost to the 
ground, and to crown all one of those black clerical 
hats with flat round top, very wide brim, and rolled up 
at the sides ! 

" The daily order is about as follows : Rise at 4 130, 
meditation and Mass as usual; breakfast, or rather 
coffee or chocolate, right after Mass; 11:30, examen, 
litanies; dinner at noon. Recreation walking always, 
* a la Frangaise ' I believe. At a quarter of eight, 
supper and recreation in the same way, examen, points 
of meditation, and retire at 9:30. There are no 
springs or mattrasses on our beds. A thin Filipino 
mat, something like a Chinese tea-sack, is unrolled on 
a cane concern stretched across the bed-frame. On 
this you put some sheets, and if the night be cold, a 
light blanket is at hand. 

". . . There are a few other customs with which we 
are not familiar in the States, but I think I can ac- 
commodate myself pretty well. The Society is still 
the same all the world over, and national and local 
differences are after all mere trifles which should not 
disturb a man's peace of soul. 



98 WILLIAM STANTON 

" November 29. 

*' Here I am again. I am pretty well settled down to 
work now. What with my theology, observatory 
work, various dealings with American officials and 
visitors. Customs House and divers other houses, the 
days do not hang heavy on my hands. I knock great 
fun out of some things. With my native ginger- 
bread complexion, and togged out in a complete Span- 
ish Padre's outfit, I am sure I am a sight. Every 
American I have met took me for an out-and-out 
Spanish Padre, or friar, or some such thing. It's a 
regular circus ! This very morning I was down at the 
Customs House with one of our lay brothers to see 
about some packages waiting for us there. The clerk 
started jabbering away in Spanish in a rather lacka- 
daisical way, as if it did not matter much to him 
whether or not we got our packages or how long we 
migiit have to wait for them. I let him go on for a 
bit. When I was tired, I said, * Well, see here, per- 
haps we can manage things in a nwre business-like way 
if we go at it in English.' You should have seen the 
expression on that fellow's face. He said, ' Well, I 

be d ! ' And after that was as attentive as one 

could wish. 

" Last Thursday we went out to the villa, or ' casa 
de campo.' It is situated on the banks of the Pasig 
River in a village called Santa Ana, a few miles from 
town. We passed along the isoad and over the bridge 
where the first shots were exchanged between our 
troops and the Filipinos. The walls, floors, and ceil- 
ings of the villa itself are punctured and scored all 
over with bullet holes. The house was first taken over 
by the Spanish soldiers as a hospital, then the in- 



MANILA 99 

surgents drove the Spaniards into the city and used 
the place as a barracks, next the Americans chased out 
the Fihpinos and occupied it as a hospital, and now it 
is back once more to its original purpose. The house 
itself is a large, cool, and convenient building, but the 
grounds about it are rather small. The Pasig flows 
deep and swift at its very door, and you may imagine 
the temptation I had to take a plunge into its pleasant 
depths and try my strength against the current, but — 
I am a Spanish Padre now, and we do not do such 
things. I am told that during the long vacations 
which are spent here at the villa, some of the reckless 
spirits amongst the brethren slip down at nightfall, tie 
a rope about their waist, make the other end of it fast 
to an iron ring in the stone landing, and thus take a 
bath. I am anxiously looking forward to see how the 
operation is carried out. I hope we shan't have to 
wear hats and shoes ! . . . 

" Observatorio de Manila, December lo, 1901. 

" Dear R . Your letter dated October 6 reached 

me on the feast of St. Stanislaus, after what I presume 
was an uneventful voyage, but my last two to you have 
had some experiences. For the Sheridan, which 
carried the first of them, was badly done up by a tor- 
nado and put into Yokahama for repairs. The War- 
ren, carrying the second, set out for Manila to take 
over the mail and passengers of the Sheridan. But 
before she got to the Sheridan she herself struck a 
reef and ripped of¥ some plates and broke a few ribs, 
so that a third transport had to be sent to aid her. 
However, I hope both letters have arrived safely at 
their destination. 



lOO WILLIAM STANTON 

". . . Father Algue and the other Spanish fathers 
connected with the Observatory are placed in a very 
anomalous situation. They have been officially in- 
formed by the Spanish Government that according to 
Spanish law they have forfeited their right of nation- 
ality or citizenship by taking the oath of office under 
a foreign Government. On the other hand, no 
foreigner in the Philippines (nor Filipino) is allowed 
by our law to become an American citizen. So the 
poor chaps have no nationality, are not recognized as 
citizens of any country on earth! Quite a predica- 
ment, isn't it? 

" Fr. S has just returned to Manila after an 

absence of three months. He has been establishing 
various new meteorological stations in the northern 
and southern parts of Luzon. He was detained nearly 
two months in Antimonon, a small town in the south, 
waiting for some boat to take him to Manila. Travel- 
ling facilities here don't seem to be much better than in 
Honduras ! 

"December 15.!!!!!!!!!!! 

*' Land of Moses ! Talk about forces of nature ! 
Give me thunder-storms, typhoons and tornados, but 
please pass me by when it comes to a good-sized 
* temblor ' or earthquake ! We have just had a terrific 
shake this nwrning. I've never had such sensations in 
my life before. It was the most unearthly feeling one 
can imagine. I had just knelt down in chapel for a 
visit after my morning coffee, when I felt the whole 
house tremble violently; grating, rumbling sounds ac- 
companied the movement; the heavy walls, some four 
feet thick, swayed back and forth, and the floor rose 
and fell with a sickly, jerky motion. I remained quiet 



MANILA loi 

for about fifteen seconds, thinking it would be over in 
a moment. But finding that things were getting worse, 
I bolted out of the door, down the steps three at a 
time, got out on the heaving ground in the center of 
the patio or interior court, and looked around to see 
the boys piling out of their chapel door and making 
for my own position en masse. Most of them threw 
themselves on their knees and poured forth their 
prayers and acts of contrition in a most pitiable tone. 
I shall never forget that scene. The boys had been 
listening to an instruction from Fr. Rector after Mass, 
but nothing could restrain their wild instinct of self- 
preservation. The ground still continued to heave and 
fall, the huge walls swung first one way then another 
until I thought surely the whole edifice was about to 
collapse, the great trees in the patio swayed back and 
forth like so many reeds. But the staunch building 
remained uninjured. I thought the quake would never 
end; but suddenly it was all over, and no harm done, 
at least in our quarters. But in the city several houses 
were tumbled down and the arches of several churches 
demolished. This has been the most severe quake felt 
in Manila since 1880, and the longest in duration: it 
lasted more than a minute and a half. Comparatively 
little harm was done, however, owing to the fact that, 
though the vibrations were longer than usual, they 
succeeded each other more slowly than in smaller earth- 
quakes of greater suddenness. ... 

" December 16, a. m. 
" Another earthquake, but very slight, this morning 
at about the same hour as yesterday's — and three 
more yesterday afternoon and evening! little fellows. 



102 WILLIAM STANTON 

Things seem to be getting lively down below — must 
be having a big dance on. 

" I visited a model Filipino cigar factory the other 
day ; went all through it. It is a small one, owned and 
carried on entirely by natives, and employs about three 
hundred men and women. Above the factory itself 
live the proprietor and his family. The greater part 
of this upper story is devoted to a beautiful chapel, 
nearly the size of the University chapel in St. Louis, 
finished in hard woods, decorated artistically with carv- 
ings, oil paintings, and frescos ; everything in exquisite 
taste. Here all the employees hear Mass daily — and 
go through the Spiritual Exercises for five days every 
year ! Just imagine such a thing in our St. Louis to- 
bacco factories ! But here we have Catholic Filipinos, 
whose religion is not put on for one day of the week, 
like their Sunday clothes. 

" Tell McG to try to imagine what his sensa- 
tions would be with his curved beak hooked under the 
eye-piece of our superb twenty-inch telescope, whilst 
he scanned the equatorial belt and the southern con- 
stellations ! . . ." 

This is from a letter to the man who succeeded 
him in Belize : 

" Observatorio de Manila, December i8, 1901. 
". . . The museum at the Ateneo is a gem. Fr. 
S has a Filipino taxidermist at work there the 



whole year round preparing and mounting specimens, 
and he's a daisy. There are a dozen or more speci- 
mens of stuffed btoas, one of them measuring twenty- 
four feet in length. 
" You ask if I have found amongst the Filipinos 



MANILA 103 

the equals of Goyo and Lucio for bush companions. 
Well, I have not had a chance to see the bush yet, and 
I have nothing to do with the boys at present, except 
to take a walk with them on recreation days through 
the streets of Manila and its suburbs. They always 
march in line, two or three abreast, and I tell you they 
make a natty appearance in their trim uniforms, spot- 
less white trousers, snug-fitting dark blue jackets with 
gilt buttons, and dark blue cap trimmed in gold. They 
usually go in bands of about a hundred or a hundred 
and fifty. Of course we always wear the ca-ssock, and 
are marks on the street. I'd give a farm to be able to 
take an occasional stroll, barefooted, along the shore 
where the waves roll in from the bay, as we could do 
at Stann Creek or outside Belize, or take a decent 
sprint along the roads without being wrapped up from 
head to feet in a long cassock and manteo. The waters 
of Manila Bay are tossing scarcely more than a stone's 
throw away, and on Thursdays at our villa the deep 
Pasig runs directly before our door ; yet I have not had 
a swim since I left the incomparable Waikiki beach 
near Honolulu. But this is Manila, not Missouri or 
Belize. . . . What a dull world this would be if we 
all had the same ideas ! . . . 

" On the feast of St. Francis Xavier the patron of 
the Normal School, the boarders gave a play, entitled 
St. Stanislaus, in the open patio. The stage setting was 
fine, the costumes rich, and the acting of -the young 
Filipinos very creditable; the only thing to mar the 
effect was the absence of foot-lights, which left the 
faces of the actors three times as dark as they naturally 
are. After the whole affair, when the crowd had dis- 
persed, the band kept on playing till late in the night; 



I04 WILLIAM STANTON 

so we had up a number of the boys to go through 
various native and Spanish dances. I must say that 
the popular Spanish dance is the most beautiful thing 
of its sort I have ever witnessed. None of our Ameri- 
can dances can come near it for grace. 

". . . We have had two quakes to-day, but very 
slight ones. But I may tell you right here that in the 
Philippines terra firma is a misnomer. Our microseis- 
mometers at the Observatory show that we are never 
still here. 

". . . We have land snails here in Mindanao which 
live in the tops of trees and have shells as big as your 
fist and beautifully coloured. Among the bivalves in 
the sea down about Tacloban lives the Tridacna gigas, 
measuring more than three feet across and weighing 
hundreds of pounds. I have seen a number of such 
specimens, but of course they are not easy to get 
hold of. 

'\ . . How is the Honduras Club? Hope it isn't 
raided too often ! I don't imagine it would flourish in 
this climate." 

To his aunt, Mrs. Siedekum, he writes on Febru- 
ary 7, 1902: 

". . . Affairs in the Philippines are in a very mixed 
up state, politically, materially, and religiously. Al- 
though organized resistance is over, fighting is still 
going on in several of the provinces, and I am con- 
vinced that there can be no permanent peace for years 
to come. The natives who have submitted cannot be 
trusted ; unless a garrison is at hand there is fear of 
an uprising at any time. They dream only of inde- 



MANILA 105 

pendence, but I feel sure that if it were given them in 
the near future, the country would return to perfect 
savagery; for the' Filipino without the softening and 
civilizing influence of religion is the worst of sav- 
ages. 

" The Filipinos were a happy and contented people 
until a few natives educated in Europe returned with- 
out faith or morals and began founding secret lodges 
of the terrible society known as the Katipunan. 
Nearly all the natives are simple, good Catholics, with 
the exception of a few dozens of renegades who consti- 
tute ' The Federal Party.' Here in Manila the natives 
are becoming corrupted by contact with the American 
soldier, and are no longer as decent as they were a few 
years ago. 

" There are two important American papers pub- 
lished here in Manila, both rabidly anti-Friar and anti- 
Catholic. The most outrageous calumnies, lies and ex- 
aggerations, are daily printed about the Friars. These 
papers are worse than any A.P.A. sheet I ever laid eyes 
on, and of course the secular papers in the States take 
their news from such sources. They are not only 
bigoted but densely ignorant of everything connected 
with the Catholic Religion. Still, and it seems strange, 
there is never a word said against the Jesuits. We are 
running the entire Weather Bureau of the archipelago, 
and outside of the five fathers and myself all the other 
observers here and throughout the islands are native 
Filipinos trained here in the Observatory. 

" Our Government has forced its irreligious public 
school system on the Filipinos, but everywhere the 
Catholics are opening private Catholic schools, and as 
these are opened the public schools become empty and 



io6 WILLIAM STANTON 

the Catholic schools filled, since the natives do not care 
to have their children brought up as atheists. Many 
young women have come here from the States to teach 
school. . . . The Philippines are no place for a decent 
unmarried American woman. 

*' Our soldiers are now following the reconcentrado 
plan in the disturbed provinces, notwithstanding the 
fact that they could not find words strong enough to 
curse it with when the ' cruel Spaniards ' followed the 
same plan. They are burning the towns in the dis- 
tricts and forcing the natives to gather along the tele- 
graph lines or be treated as traitors. The troops, both 
officers and men, are tired of war and anxious to get 
home, for war in a country and climate like this is a 
more than ordinarily terrible thing. What the out- 
come will be, it is hard to see just now. One officer 
said to me, ' I wish to God Dewey had never seen 
Manila ! ' 

" The American Government has a white elephant on 
its hands, and naturally doesn't know what to do with 
it. It is costing millions of money and thousands of 
lives — and still there is no end in sight. The Filipino 
people are undoubtedly unable to govern themselves; 
if left to themselves would revert to savagery and con- 
stant tribal warfare. Spain never did subdue them by 
force of arms. It was the Christian influence of the 
Spanish missionaries that won these Malays, and then 
protected them from the injustice of grasping and un- 
scrupulous governors. They made of them a peaceful, 
happy. Christian people, who continued so until they 
were stirred up a few years ago by the secret lodges 
led blindly by a few^ crafty educated men, many of 
whom are now receiving fat salaries in the employ of 



MANILA 107 

the American Government whilst at the same time 
secretly helping the insurgents. They are men who 
would sell their own mothers or fathers for a handful 
of gold ; and they are the men who are crying for the 
expulsion of all the religious orders from the is- 
lands. . . . 

"Of course the greatest noise is made about the 
immorality of the friars. Now the truth is that, just 
as in the States we have a few sacrilegious * ex-priests ' 
and ' ex-nuns ' who have been a disgrace to their call- 
ing, so also in the Philippines a few unfortunate men 
have proved unfaithful to their vows, a disgrace to 
themselves, and a scandal to the Church and their 
neighbour. But to accuse the friars, as a body, of im- 
morality, is as unjust as it would be to accuse the 
American clergy of unfaithfulness on account of the 
bad lives of their * ex-priests.' There was a Judas 
amongst the Apostles; there will probably be Judases 
until the judgment day; for the devil does his utmost 
of course to destroy God's chosen souls. And the 
enemies of the Church are almost insanely eager to 
make the most of such scandals as do happen." 

To a class-mate in St. Louis, on February 17, 
1902: 

*'. . . At present there is nothing very exciting going 
on. Since the establishment of * The Philippine 
Weather Bureau ' by our Government, a * Crop Serv- 
ice ' has become an essential part of its work. Al- 
though I always have been something of a ' hayseed ' 
and a wild man of the bush, I never dreamed of run- 
ning a farm, a threshing machine, or a Crop Service. 



io8 WILLIAM STANTON 

Yet here I am, looking after the ' Crop Service ' of the 
PhiHppine Islands and studying economic entomology. 
Bugs, Bugs, Bugs! Little bugs, big bugs, every bug 
that takes a bite at the crops of the Islands, have all 
been handed over to my tender mercies. . . . 

". . . The theological department is of course going 
along quietly and unostentatiously at the same time. 
I am on friendly terms with Perrone and Sabetti. I 
passed my Second Volume around Christmas, and 
expect to pass * ad audiendas ' about the end of the 
present month. 

" The scholastic year closes here on March 9, on 
which day the * Normal ' will have its exhibition and 
distribution. I have three young Filipinos in training 
for a little comedy sketch in English which I have 
scribbled for the occasion. A few weeks ago we had 
the quarterly public disputation of the philosophy class 
at the Ateneo, when the natives defended their theses 
in ontology and ethics very ably against all comers ; and 
all in Latin, remember ! I am afraid the philosophers 
in our Missouri colleges would feel rather small if they 
ran up against our ' savages ' in such a contest. The 
course at the Ateneo is certainly very complete, and 
their A.B. is given only after a second year of 
philosophy. . . . 

". . . The press and the Protestant ministers are 
doing their best to pervert the faith of the poor people 
here. But what is true of the Latin races, is true all 
the world over of the Indian tribes who have received 
the true faith at their hands : you may succeed in mak- 
ing bad Catholics of them, but you can never make 
them Protestants. I have heard that the Protestants 
are making reports of great numbers of converts in 



MANILA 109 

the American papers ; but it is only a repetition of their 
old tactics — it's all a big, big lie. The ministers make 
a great noise advertising their services, and preach 
before a couple of dozen lazy cocheros and muchachos 
who are lounging around trying to kill time and drop 
in to see what is going on. Protestant bibles are dis- 
tributed, and a grand report sent back to the missionary 
and bible societies at home who are supplying the 
millions. In the meantime the cochero strolls off, and 
rolls his cigarettes with leaves from the bibles, starts 
his fire to boil his rice, or puts them to more ignomini- 
ous uses. . . . 

" The great day is coming along pretty rapidly, old 
man, so don't forget to pray hard for the solitary one 
in the far east." 

From a letter to another scholastic in St. Louis, 
March 3 : 

". . . Fr. S and I, a few weeks ago, went over 

across the Bay to the famous Cavite, to look after the 
establishment of a meteorological station. We passed 
within arm's length of the rusting skeletons of the 
Spanish ships which Dewey sent to the bottom. There 
are two of our Fathers in the town taking the place of 
the friars who have decamped to Manila. Whilst 
looking for the Fathers' residence, we entered one of 
the deserted churches and the attached monastery. 
Talk about your desolation of desolations ! nothing but 
the solid walls, roof, and stone partitions left; every- 
thing else smashed or carried away, even the stone slabs 
of the pavement. But the convent itself was not de- 
serted, not by any means. It was filled with filth and 



no WILLIAM STANTON 

a couple of hundred Indians living in the friars' rooms, 
several families in each room, and at least half a dozen 
cocks in each, tied to the various articles of rubbish. 
The rest of the description I must prudently omit, 
merely remarking that Saturdays at the mouth of 
Stann Creek couldn't begin to compare with the in- 
terior of that convent. . . . The Carib is very tame 
alongside of the Filipino! But don't imagine I have 
gone back on the Caribs — even though the future Fr. 
K. will take good care of them. Do oranges still dis- 
appear from sick men's rooms? If so, tell Patrick 
the Broad-backed that we have three or four dozen 
orange trees in our garden here; let him come over. 
Has Mankato Bill finished his ' morals ' yet ? and is it 
true that the Count has shrieked all the remaining 
hairs off his head when assisting you in stringing 
wires? . . . 

" Glad to hear Mr. B. has taken my place in defend- 
ing our much-maligned mahogany mission. Truth is 
bound to prevail in the end. But here's something 
on the quiet which you must tell Phil (of course not 
whilst any of the scoffers at Belize are around). I 
was piloting through the Observatory, a few weeks ago, 
the captain of an English First-Class Cruiser and the 
Chief Justice of one of His Majesty's colonies. One 
of the gentlemen, I found, thought that Belize was 
somewhere in South America, the other that it was the 
same as British Guiana ! ! ! ! ! 

*' I had a letter from Fr. H. the other day, from 
China, saying that as yet he has received no orders to 
prepare for Manila. It's a great pity; there is not a 
single American priest in the whole archipelago, out- 
side of three or four chaplains who are of course ' hik- 



MANILA III 

ing ' with their soldier boys. EngHsh-speaking priests 
for the ministry are sadly needed here at present, 
whilst unfortunately there are some dozens of ' preach- 
ers ' trying to pervert the natives ; not however in 
parts where there is danger to life and limb, but in 
comfortable quarters here in Manila or other safe 
domiciles. . . . 

". . . If you happen to run across anything inter- 
esting on bugs, just send it along, for as you may know, 
I have charge of the ' Crop Service ' of the Weather 
Bureau, and am up to my ears in the economic ento- 
mology of the Philippines. Bugs do come in handy 
sometimes, after all — who would imagine it ! 

" Well, adios ! for the present. Greetings to all the 
brethren especially to the stand-bys of the * Club.' 
And don't forget the old Carib in your prayers, espe- 
cially as the end of the year draws near. 

" P.S. I must not forget a most extraordinary 
event. I had a breakfast this morning, the first since 
my arrival in Manila. I am sure you sympathize with 
me. Our usual so-called breakfast consists of coffee 
and dry bread ; but this morning we celebrated the end 
of the school year luxuriously with real beefsteak, 
eggs, fried chippies, (real chippies, you needn't laugh!) 
and bananas. We had a chippy hunt the night before, 
the muchachos climbing up under the eaves of the 
porch and catching them in their nests. You must 
come to Manila if you want a chippy breakfast. It 
seems we are going to have another hunt in a few 
days. From what I hear, this is the chief exercise and 
entertainment of the scholastics, too, in vacations. 
Our Meramec trips and similar violent exercises of a 
Missouri vacation are eminently unfitted for monks 



112 WILLIAM STANTON 

who never take off their habits — though their garb 
underneath would be just the thing for field-day 
sports." 

From a letter to his sister, on March 12, 1902 : 

". . . The climate does not bother me in the least. 
It can't come near Belize for heat ; though I have only 
passed through the coolest part of the year and we are 
just approaching the worst part, April and May, when 
Manila is said to be stifling hot. But even then, as I 
see from the figures given, the temperature and moist- 
ure does not reach that of Belize, so I guess I am safe. 

" As for my work, I may say first that I am finishing 
privately my theological studies in preparation for the 
priesthood, and with the Lord's help I hope to be 
ordained some time in June or July. Of course you 
will hear from me before then, however. At the same 
time I am one of the assistant directors of the Observa- 
tory. This has the reputation throughout the world 
of being the best equipped meteorological and seismical 
observatory to be found anywhere. There are four 
different departments, all perfectly equipped ; the mag- 
netic, astronomic, seismic, and meteorologic, the last 
two being the most practically important. There are 
six of our Fathers, besides myself, at the head of the 
different sections, and about thirty or thirty-five as- 
sistant Filipino observers here at the Manila Observa- 
tory. We have some thirty-two auxiliary stations 
scattered about the archipelago, where our observers 
(all Filipinos trained under our Fathers here at 
Manila) send in their reports by telegraph several 
times a day. The principal work is in the weather 



MANILA 113 

forecasts and predictions of the terrible typhoons that 
are almost continually passing over some part or other 
of the islands and the neighbouring seas. The warn- 
ings are sent by the Observatory to all points connected 
by telegraph and cable in the islands and neighbouring 
ports of Indo-China, China, and Japan. This work 
had been going on for many years before the war, and 
under the new regime the U. S. Government, anxious 
to profit by the admirable system and work carried on 
by our Fathers, "has made an arrangement with the 
Observatory, constituting it the official Philippine 
Weather Bureau. We give the Government the result 
of 'our scientific work, and it in turn stands all the ex- 
pense of carrying on the system and pays salaries to the 
employees and observers and directors. It is, however, 
independent of the Civil Service Bureau. Fr. Algue 
is the head of the whole system, and he is responsible 
only to the Philippine Commission. 

". . . Pray fervently that the Almighty may spare us 
all till that day when, though most unworthy of such a 
grace, I may be able, as the Lord's annointed, to lay 
my consecrated hands on your heads and call down 
God's best blessings on all of you, the nearest and 
dearest on this earth." 

On March 31, he writes to a class-mate in St. 
Louis : 

"... I am glad you found that letter interesting, 
bearing the postmark ' Oct.' and dated * Nov. Nov. 
Nov.' I sent three letters about the same time, all 
dated November, and realized the fact only several 
days afterward; I shall not attempt to explain the 
discrepancy. 



114 WILLIAM STANTON 

" Well, Lent and Holy Week, with its religious pro- 
cessions, etc., are all over. The Lent part didn't af- 
fect me, for as I told you before, we keep perpetual 
Lent here so far as breakfast is concerned. I am 
always as hungry as a wolf before dinner comes 
around. I thought I would get used to the regime, 
but I must confess that, though it does not interfere 
with my work, I feel it just as much to-day as I did 
the first day of my arrival. No doubt it all depends on 
one's ' raisin' '. The processions through the streets 
during Holy Week and the devotion of the people at 
services were most edifying. 

" To-day the professors at the Ateneo and the Nor- 
mal go out to the villa at Sta. Ana, to begin their long 
vacations. Their supreme enjoyment and recreation 
there is playing dominoes. . . . The brother clothes- 
keeper has just brought me my bathing suit for Sta. 
Ana. I think I told you already about the one he 
brought me for bathing in the tub here at home. 
With the present thing on and with the rope attach- 
ment around the belly, I imagine I would make a good 
anchor for the raft at Beulah. ... I guess I shall 
have to try the experiment, but I don't anticipate any 
great exhilaration from the proceeding, and think a 
couple of days at the villa will fulfill all my obligations 
of courtesy. I prefer the Observatory grounds and 
the shower bath here at home. Dominoes and ropes 
are rather indigestible. Here at home I shall try to 
prepare in my own poor way for ordination, Deo 
volente. 

" The exact day of my ordination is not yet deter- 
mined. When it is settled, I shall let you know im- 
mediately. I begin to feel smaller and smaller as the 



I 



MANILA 115 

time draws near, but I hope the Lord will not reject 
me entirely. The American Catholics here, especially 
the young men, are looking forward impatiently for 
the day. They are asking for me as their director or 
chaplain. Great heavens! how small I do feel! It 
gives me the shivers. 

" The English-speaking dailies of Manila are still 
continuing their crusade against the friars and the 
Church. They are getting ranker and ranker every 
day, and there is not a word said in reply which can 
reach the ears of the English-speaking population. 
For these latter never read the Spanish papers. It's 
a great pity we have no Catholic English organ here. 
. . . Finally Superiors gave me a chance to write some- 
thing. The difficulty was to get it in the papers. I 
sent it to three; one, which had it in for the others, 
printed it. And then there was some fun. 

" A comment of the editor accompanied the ' Pro- 
test,' and this stirred up some of the Irish blood of the 
capital. A few hours after the paper appeared, some 
warm-blooded Celts bearded the editor in his den, and 
as one of them expressed it, ' we simply gave him hell ! ' 
They proved him to his face a liar three times over, 
proved he didn't know a friar from a corn-cob, asked 
him for some Catholic authorities for certain state- 
ments he had made. The editor told them he had a 
Catholic in the office itself, who knew all about the 
friars and the Catholic Church. ' Trot him out, and 
let's see what he looks like.' He ushered in a low- 
browed Portugee who said he was a Catholic and had 
lived eight years in the house of a friar with three 
women. But the Portugee was in for a bad time. 
They made him admit he hadn't been to Mass or the 



ii6 WILLIAM STANTON 

Sacraments in the last eleven years, that his friar was 
no friar at all, but a miserable Filipino renegade, that 

he himself was a d liar and libertine, etc. They 

wound up by telling the editor again what they thought 
of him and his Catholic authorities, that they had his 
measure taken and his whole past record and that of 
his gang, and that they would show him up and run 
him out of Manila. It was all rather violent, but 
interesting. 

" The chief spokesman on the occasion was a certain 

O who had come out as inspector of schools. He 

is gathering a lot of facts with regard to the Protest- 
ant propaganda carried on in the public school system 
here. As you may have heard, four out of five super- 
intendents here are Protestant ministers. O is 

finding out too much here in Manila ... he has been 
assigned to the island of Bohol, where he can't see any- 
thing or do any damage. Amongst all the public school 
teachers in Manila there is not a single Catholic man, 
and only two girls — who, of course, don't count. The 
Catholic school teachers who come from the States 
have been quietly shipped to the provinces, out in the 
bush, where they can't see what is going on in the 
capital, or be an obstacle to the propagation of the 
* pure gospel ' of liberty with which the grand Republic 
of Freedom is blessing the benighted Filipino. 

*\ . . By the way, paulo majora canamus. Fr. 
Algue has just brought me in two cigars. They are 
what are called family cigars. Don't imagine I am try- 
ing to tell you a fish story; these are actual facts. 
Each cigar by actual measurement is two feet, one and 
a half inches, long ; a little over two inches in diameter 
at the far end, half an inch diameter at the other. 



MANILA 117 

The modus operandi is as follows: The cigar is 
strung up at a convenient height in some comer of 
the house. The first one up in the morning lights the 
big end and puffs away until he is tired. The other 
members of the family, or friends coming in, go over 
and take a whack at it as long as they please whenever 
they find it free. It generally lasts during the whole 
day. Wouldn't the Count have a great time working 
out his combination of strings and wires on such a 
subject. 

" You have probably seen in the papers before now 
that the cholera has broken out in Manila. No doubt 
about it, and in its most malignant form. The victims 
drop off within three or four hours after being at- 
tacked. Up to the present only one white man has 
been attacked; all the others have been natives or 
Chinese. Very stringent measures have been adopted 
by the sanitary department and there is good hope of 
keeping it in check. Several of the infected districts 
have been burnt to the ground ; the whole city is under 
strict quarantine. Nevertheless it has already spread 
to Cavite, Balanga, and Malolos. The authorities have 
stamped out the bubonic plague, and we hope the same 
will be done with the present pest, which came from 
some one of the Chinese ports; yet it will be a more 
difficult matter. 

'* I hope I shall be ordained about the same time as 
you in St. Louis. I am sorry I am missing the Rites 
Class and other good helps of the theologate. There 
will probably be some brown-skinned Filipinos or- 
dained with me, so I shall feel right at home so far 
as colour is concerned. Don't forget the old Carib in 
your prayers." 



ii8 WILLIAM STANTON 

June 15, 1902. 

". . . Nearly every letter I have had in the last six 
months asks about the date of my ordination. Well, 
at the present date, June 15, 1 haven't the slightest idea ! 
I had been looking forward to this event taking place 
toward the end of this month, at least about the same 
date as that of my companeros in St. Louis, but now I 
guess not. Superiors here must wait for the word 
from the Prov. at St. Louis, and so far that word is 
not forthcoming. You see, I am in the far, far East, 
on the other side of the world. I still have hopes 
something may turn up before St. Ignatius' day — 
vamos a ver ! Or perhaps after the informations have 
come in about Buck Stanton's career during the last 
fifteen years, from north, south, east and west, su- 
periors may judge here that he needs to brush up his 
spiritual furniture for a year or two longer, and to 
get over his inveterate worldly habits, such as sitting 
with his legs crossed and combing his hair. But no 
doubt the Lord will bring things around in their proper 
time, and no need to worry. 

*' (Monday morning, 9:30) — Ca . . . nastos ! have 
just shot a * lectio brevis ' at my little brown brothers. 
We never know what's ahead of us. When I stepped 
out of my last class in Belize I thought my magisterium 
was over for good and aye. But lo! here I am pro- 
fessor of English in the higher classes of the famous 
Escuela Normal de S. Xavier de ^lanila. ^ly present 
disciples are somewhat older than my charges at 
Belize, but run pretty much through the same range 
of colours, barring however both white and black. 
Of course my opening speech was entirely in Spanish, 
as my future Aguinaldos are scarcely yet able to 



MANILA 119 

wrestle with English as she is spoke. But in a couple 
of months I hope we shall be able to dispense with 
most of the Spanish, for they are ravenous for English. 

" We have about two thousand boys at the two 
schools here, nearly six hundred of them boarders. 
Our Fathers say that if we had room and men, we 
should easily get between three and four thousand 
pupils. It is wonderful what confidence the Filipino 
has in Jesuit teaching : the tradition goes down through 
generations. As soon as the boys of the family begin 
to wear trousers (ten years or thereabouts), they are 
shipped off to the Padres de la Compania, los Jesuitas, 
and generally they go right through the course. If 
some of them have cabbage heads, the parent says: 
* Well, never mind ; they must go to the Fathers just the 
same. They will make good civilized Christians out of 
them and gentlemen, and that is the most important 
thing for this world and the next.' This is quoted al- 
most literally from a letter received yesterday by the 
Rector from a man who now has three sons here. 
Nine boys of the same family have already gone 
through our colleges, and the father writes that he has 
three smaller ones at home whom he will send, * with 
God's help,' as soon as they are old enough! (They 
are good Catholic f amihes here : like the Irish ; twelve 
to fifteen children are common.) 

" Up to a month ago all our ' American ' newspapers 
of Manila were rabidly anti-CathoHc, anti-friar, anti- 
Filipino, anti-Spanish, anti-all-morals. The two prin- 
cipal dailies are fairly well run down. The editors of 
two others were brought up and convicted of * sedi- 
tion.' A third has sold out and is now in other hands. 
It looks as if we were finally to have a couple of decent 



I20 WILLIAM STANTON 

daily papers. A new clean little weekly has lately 
shown up, of which I am sending a few copies. From 
these you will see that the tide is beginning to turn. 

" I get * the most widely read newspaper in Central 
America ' regularly from Stanley, and an occasional 
letter from Bro. Dan, so that I keep in touch with 
Belize. I am sorry to hear that there is danger of 
the college going by the board. But my Mayas and 
Caribs will always be on deck, and I hope to be ready 
for them in a short time. . . . What has become of my 
famous invincible * Columbian Crew ' ? Oh, for a good 
pull at the oars or a dive into limpid waters! But 
alas! we don't engage in such worldly pastimes here. 
Do you remember our five mile pull from the * Haul- 
over ' against Willie Price and Stolf ? and our row out 
to Spanish Caye on New Year's eve? How I wish 
you were here for a day, so that we might slip off to 
the woods and get lost, as we did that day back of 
Stann Creek with Magdaleno for our guide ! '* 

In a sense, these letters need no interpretation. 
Scattered through nearly a year, they indicate 
roughly the wide variety of his occupations. Yet 
one would scarcely gather from them how intensely 
active Stanton was during that time. Witk charac- 
teristic modesty he says nothing at all of his de- 
cidedly striking achievements in the field of science. 
It is almost incredible to find from the records of 
the Smithsonian Institution at Washington that, in 
the midst of a lot of other work, he discovered sixty- 



MANILA 121 

seven new varieties of hymenopterous insects, of 
which one genus and eight species have been named 
after him. That would be rather a proud record 
for a man who could devote uninterrupted years to 
the sole work of collecting and investigating. He 
wrote monographs on " Insects Affecting the Crops 
in the Philippines," in connection with his ** Crop 
Service." He made interesting and valuable re- 
searches in botany. With all this, and with a great 
deal of routine work in the observatory, he had a 
large task of smoothing, rather unofficially, the re- 
lations between the Government executives and the 
Fathers in charge of the Observatory. And he still 
found time for a multitudinous correspondence, of 
which the few extracts just quoted can give but the 
most meagre idea. 

It would almost be worth while printing that cor- 
respondence in full, to have it show how completely 
self-effacing Stanton was, and to show how the pur- 
pose and hope of working for others dominated him. 
If his work was in science, his dreams were all of 
souls. To study " bugs " amused him : to do good 
to his fellow-men was his supreme inspiration. But 
I have no intention of treating this period of his life 
fully. It will suffice for my purpose to have given 
a sufficient outline of it to fill in the general view. 



CHAPTER VIII 

On August 10, 1902, Stanton was ordained priest, 
in the private chapel of the Archbishop of Manila. 
He was in his thirty- third year, and had been fifteen 
years in the Society. How the expectation of that 
day had coloured all his thoughts through those 
years! His letter to his sister, written on the day 
after his first Mass, is inexpressibly touching in its 
simple feeling ; but it is too sacred for public perusal. 
He was awed, but not frightened. The faith that 
made him wonder at God's astonishing condescen- 
sion, gave him courage to accept the great gift and 
the great responsibility with perfect simplicity. 
The whole affair was too big to prose about it. It 
was all God's doing, and he could only be quietly 
grateful that God had picked him out, a little pawn, 
for such a move in the Great Game. 

His ordination was very quiet, without any public 
display. The little regret that none of his family 
could be present was swallowed up in the immensity 
of the fact that he was now " a priest forever." 
His mind leaped out at once to his new duties, his 

122 



THE PRIEST 123 

new, wonderful opportunities. It was a consum- 
mation, the crown of years of efforts : but not a time 
for " Nunc Dimitis," rather for the cry of the heart, 
" Here am I, send me ! '' It was for this that he had 
become ^ Jesuit, for this that he had made sacrifices : 
to work for others, to be God's minister to needy 
men. 

And very swiftly God sent him to His work. 
There was a little breathing-spell, a little delay for 
human congratulations. There was a great Solemn 
Mass at La Ermita, " the American church " ; with 
the Army Chaplains as his assistants ; before a great 
crowd of notables, American and Filipino ; with the 
music of a full orchestra of eighty pieces, and ex- 
quisite singing. There were receptions in his 
honour, and no end of gifts, testimonials, addresses, 
what-not. The Manila papers flared — '' The first 
American priest ordained in Manila " — " A new era 
for Catholicity in the Philippines ! " and so forth. 
But in a few days he was back at his post at the 
Observatory, with the new tasks, the most satisfy- 
ing tasks, of a priest. 

The cholera still raged. Fr. McKinnon, the resi- 
dent Army Chaplain in Manila, sickened and died. 
Fr. Stanton's work multiplied. He gives some de- 



124 WILLIAM STANTON 

tails in the course of a letter to a comrade in St. 
Louis. 

". . . With the death of Fr. McKinnon, I was left 
the only English-speaking priest in Manila. The day 
he fell sick, just during the height of the cholera, I was 
hurried out on an emergency call to a poor Kentucky 
negro dying of the pest. I got there in time to confess 
him and give him the last anointing before he died. 
You see, I seem fated for the niggers, or at least for 
the coloured folk of one kind or another. The follow- 
ing night I was called again, at 2:30 a.m., this time 
for two poor Irish teamsters in the same fix as the 
nigger, and with the help of the Lord I got them ready 
for the next world. After that work came swiftly 
indeed. 

*' Sunday came, and I had to take Fr. McKinnon's 
place and look after the American congregation in 
Ermita church, with mass and sermon at 9 :^o. I know 
it is contrary to all the books and the counsels of the 
elders for a young, inexperienced priest to get up and 
attempt to preach the word of God without very careful 
preparation, even in writing, but with my Observatory 
work and my class and my sick I was glad enough to 
have time even to read over the Gospel of the day 
before Mass on the morning itself : writing was hope- 
lessly out of the question. When cholera is abroad, 
taking off poor fellows with three or four hours' 
notice, and you find yourself the only pebble on the 
beach, all things cannot be done according to the books. 

" After the cholera had almost completely disap- 
peared amongst the civilian whites, it broke out 
amongst the soldiers, and had carried off sixteen of 



THE PRIEST 125 

the poor boys in the pest hospital before I knew any- 
thing about it. The worst of it was that I found about 
two-thirds of the names were Irish. I hurried down 
immediately, and found twenty-seven boys, seventeen 
of whom were Catholics. I got confessions from 
every one of them and, with one exception, without 
any difficulty. This exception was a strawberry blonde 
like Your Reverence, and answered to the euphonious 
name of Kennedy. He told me he was not a Catholic 
and that I could not do anything for him. I asked 
him where he had stolen his name. Within ten min- 
utes I had him on his knees — metaphorically, to be 
sure — and before I left him he too had made his peace 
with his Maker and was ready to appear before the 
Source of all mercy. 

" My hospital work, though not specially exhilarat- 
ing physically after a full day's work in the Observa- 
tory, I found truly most consoling. The looks with 
which I am greeted on my first appearance at any of 
the American hospitals are anything but encouraging; 
for with my cassock I am, of course, invariably taken 

as one of those d friars. But I no sooner make 

myself known than I am treated with the greatest con- 
sideration by officials, nurses, and men, and am given 
a free fling. 

" When the cholera subsided in the city I began to 
round up some of the soldier boys in their quarters. 
One instance may be interesting. Mr. Brown, the 
English scholastic recently arrived, and myself started 
for a walk in the outskirts of Manila, looking for some- 
thing to turn up. We missed our way, and found our- 
selves at nightfall in sight of a village of natives about 
four miles from the city. The streets were alive with 



126 WILLIAM STANTON 

thousands of natives who seemed to speak nothing 
but Tagalo and were wondering what the two ' f railes ' 
were after. I managed, however, after a Httle search, 
to hit the right road to Manila, and found it led to 
just what I was looking for, the Pasay Barracks. It 
was late, and we had no time to lose. As we were 
hurrying along in the moonlit road near the quarters, 
I overheard the remark from a group in a roadside 
tienda, ' What-in-the-hell kind of friars are those, 
talking English ? ' Just then two of the boys turned 
suddenly in their tracks, started down the road ahead 
of us, and waited in the shadow of a clump of bamboo. 
As we neared them, they came out into the moonlight, 
doffed their hats, and one of them blurted out: 
' Father, we heard you speaking English. You're the 
first priest we have heard speak English since we have 
been out here, and we'd like very much if you could 
arrange to give a lot of us boys a chance to go to our 
duties.' 

" I told them they were just the chaps I was looking 
for. I learned from them that in their battery, out of 
a hundred and four men who came out from the States, 
one hundred were Catholics. They came from New 
York, and my two friends answered to the names, Tom 
Burke and Bill Madden. I told them I would try to 
make arrangements for next Sunday, and sent them 
away happy, to drum up their companions. 

" The Post comprises three batteries of artillery and 
seven cavalry companies. During the week I called 
on the Commandant, told him who I was and what I 
wanted. He was not a Catholic, and there was a 
Protestant Chaplain at the Post, and the Post had in 
the meantime been quarantined; but notwithstanding 



THE PRIEST 127 

these facts, he told me with the greatest courtesy that 
he would issue a general order on Saturday morning, 
advising all the men that those who wished to attend 
my ' service ' might take out passes for Saturday eve- 
ning (3 to 6 o'clock) and Sunday morning (8 to 11 
o'clock). He wished the boys had a chance oftener to 
have the services of an American Catholic priest. 

" For the edification of the natives, I preferred to use 
the church of the town a mile or so distant, rather than 
say Mass in the Post; for the Filipino looks on all 
Americanos as heathens — and you can't blame them 
much, either. Saturday afternoon, a band of about 
fifty of the boys marched to the church under the com- 
mand of Sergeant O'Donnell. The gallant Sergeant 
said that he had rounded up the present crowd, and 
that more would come later, but that he could not go 
to confession himself to-day, as it had been seven years 
since he had been to his duties, and he was not ready. 
Father, and he would go some other time, Father, etc. 
etc. * No, no, old man ; that won't do at all. You 
must give the example to your men.' And in the end 
I just took him quietly by the arm, and we marched 
into the church and to the confessional. The others 
say he came out radiant, and persuaded quite a num- 
ber of them, who had simply taken out passes to get 
out of quarantine and who were in the same fix as he, 
to clean up their scores. Before they left every last 
one had been to confession, and you never saw a hap- 
pier set of boys as they marched back to barracks. 

" In the morning before Mass I heard some more 
confessions. Then, when the church was cleared of 
natives after their last Mass, about 9 130, I celebrated 
for my soldier boys. The doors, windows, and rear 



128 WILLIAM STANTON 

portion of the church were crowded with astonished 
natives, taking in the unusual sight. There are no 
pews in these churches, you know, and the body of uni- 
formed Americans kneeling on the floor during nearly 
the whole Mass was a revelation to the Filipinos, who, 
except at the consecration, stand during Mass, the 
women squatting on the floor, the babies rolling around 
indiscriminately from one place to another. Their 
wonder grew when they saw our boys walk up to the 
communion rail with hands folded and eyes cast down 
in all reverence, as we are .accustomed to do at home ; 
whereas here the men, when they do go (a rare oc- 
currence, so far as my experience goes), approach and 
return from the rail nonchalantly, very much as men 
walk about the public streets of our cities. But our 
standards of reverence in many ways seem to be dif- 
ferent. 

" Another hit seems to have been made by my aco- 
lytes, the redoubtable Sergeant O'Donnell and Cor- 
poral Kelly, who served the Mass in full uniform and 
went through their parts like professed members of 
the Holy Family Altar Boys Society. The native 
Padre was himself very much impressed by the con- 
duct of the boys, and took occasion from their example 
to preach a lesson to his own people. During the 
Mass I gave them a few words * appropriate to the 
occasion/ and after Mass sent them back light-hearted 
to their barracks with the promise of another chance 
to clean up their books before a great while. . . . 

" Excuse the interruption. I expected to give you 
an account of a couple of my trips through the prov- 
inces, but I find I have no time. In a few minutes I 



THE PRIEST 129 

shall have to be packing my grip for an inspection of 
the meteorological stations in the Sulu archipelago, 
Jolo, Mindanao, and other southern islands. I start 
to-morrow on the * Hai-Mun.' So, hasta luego, old 
fellow." 

His work as a priest in Manila was really con- 
siderable. In addition to acting as a sort of unoffi- 
cial chaplain to the soldiers, he kept on in charge of 
the Ermita church and so was thrown into contact 
with the fairly large body of American Catholics in 
the city. And with all he made himself felt almost 
immediately. The " boys " delighted in him, wel- 
comed him at once with the utmost good fellowship 
and with complete confidence. More than one 
Army officer has testified to the immense influence 
he had over them. It is safe to say that during 
his time there were very few Catholic soldiers in 
Manila who did not practise their religion edify- 
ingly. He was all priest, but he had no clerical 
pose ; nor, on the other hand, had he any cheap tricks 
of an affected camaraderie. With a quiet, natural 
dignity, with perfect good-humour, and with the 
absolute simple sincerity which was native to him, 
he came amongst them as God's representative and 
they received him as such. He could chaff them 
without sacrificing at all his priestly character ; and 



I30 WILLIAM STANTON 

he could talk very bluntly to them without being 
even suspected of scolding. 

Nor was his influence less in the wider field of the 
civilians. How he met all the demands on his time 
from these, in the midst of his other occupations, is 
matter for wonder. It is not astonishing that we 
have fewer letters of this period ; the marvel being 
rather that he should find time to write any. He 
was, in a short time, one of the best-known men in 
Manila, as much respected and loved amongst the 
official and educated classes as amongst his " boys " 
at the barracks. And withal he found time to look 
after the needs of some of the Filipino people. 
There was an American Normal School in Manila, 
established by the Government for Filipino girls. 
These girls, living in a dormitory under charge of an 
excellent American woman, a Protestant, were very 
keen to be Americanized. They asked Fr. Stanton 
if they might go to a Protestant church, as they 
wished to have their religious instruction in English. 
With no little difficulty, he arranged to give them 
instruction and catechism classes himself : the Gov- 
ernor General, himself a Catholic, insisting that each 
Catholic girl should secure a written request for 
such instruction from her parents. The work still 
continues. 



THE PRIEST 131 

Then, he had to go on long tours of inspection 
through the Islands, in his meteorological work. 
And here too he is always the priest. Whatever 
time he could properly spare from his scientific duties 
was given to helping the natives, who in many in- 
stances were sorely in need of help. Almost any 
letter on these tours, taken at random, will show 
how eager and how successful was his activity. As 
an instance, he writes to his aunt, on February 20, 
1903: 

" Zamboanga, Mindanao, P. I. 

"... I just arrived yesterday from the island of 
Jolo in the Sulu Archipelago. This is the stronghold 
of the Mores in these parts and the residence of the 
Sultan. But in the town there are, besides the Ameri- 
can soldiers, a few hundred Christian Filipinos. 
There is no priest, so I was kept busy baptizing babies 
born since the last time they had seen a priest, which 
was nearly a year ago. These poor people kept me 
occupied up to the very moment I had to board the 
steamer for Zamboanga. Jolo is about five degrees 
north of the equator, almost in sight of Borneo, and 
some eight hundred miles from Manila. 

** Zamboanga, where I am now, is a beautiful, well- 
shaded town, full of coconut groves and lovely trees, 
and is the mihtary headquarters for the southern 
islands. Saturday and Sunday I shall give the soldiers 
a chance to go to their religious duties. The poor 
fellows are here, some of them for years, without hav- 



132 WILLIAM STANTON 

ing had a chance to speak to a priest who could under- 
stand them. 

" To-morrow morning I go to the island of Basilan, 
another island of Moros, where there are some troops, 
and where I shall have some scientific work and also 
some work for souls. . . ." 

In the meanwhile, the work at the Observatory 
increased, owing to the absence of some of the direc- 
tors. Then Fr. Stanton was appointed confessor to 
the boys at the Normal School. He welcomed a 
week's rest at the villa, and took advantage of the 
respite to go out and capture a live boa-constrictor. 
He writes to St. Louis : 

" Manila Observatory, June 23, 1903. 

" Salutations from the Pearl of the Orient to all the 
crowd ! A short time ago I spent a week's vacation at 
Santa Ana, where I passed the time pleasantly, burning 
Manila weeds and diving under dead carabaos and cer- 
tain other smaller but no less interesting floaters in 
the simmering waters of the tortuous Pasig. The river 
hereabouts would in some respects run a close second 
to the Chicago River, though it is infinitely more pic- 
turesque. But at present I am head and heels in work, 
since the staff has been reduced by the departure of the 
two that have sailed for the States. . . . 

". . . Enclosed you will find a paragraph from the 
Manila Cahlenews, which you may find interesting and 
which will remind you of days gone by. I have the 
beast in training and have just regaled him with a 



THE PRIEST 133 

morsel of one rat and two cats — alive, of course. He 
slid them down nicely and asked for more. He is a 
bit too strenuous for one man to handle, and not over- 
affectionate as yet ; for the other day, when an hombre 
and myself were giving him some exercise, the hombre 
grabbed the beast's tail before I was aware of it, and 
the beast himself managed to comb the back of my 
left hand with his upper jaw. The by-standers were 
horrified, of course, to see the blood running, but I am 
still aHve and kicking. 

''Exceptionally hot weather just now — rainy sea- 
son a month late, and not in sight yet. Both colleges 
larger than last year. For want of accomodations we 
had to refuse more than tzvo hundred applications as 
boarders at the Normal, and more than three hundred 
at the Ateneo. It was rather amusing to hear the 
parents say, when told that there was not a single bed 
vacant : ' Oh, that is nothing. Father. Let the boys 
sleep anywhere, on the floor, in the kitchen, with the 
cats and chickens; they sleep anywhere; only please 
take them in; they have never slept on a bed in their 
lives ! ' 

". . . We have just heard of the appointment of 
Fr. Harty as Archbishop of Manila. Would to God 
he may come soon, to begin to put some order in the 
chaos now reigning. But if he is not an extraordinary 
man, he will either give up in disgust or be put in an 
insane asylum before he lives here long and tries to 
do his duty.^ I pity the poor man who comes." 

1 Archbishop Harty did not give np in disgust, did not re- 
tire to an asylum, but remained thirteen years and did his 
duty. I think Fr. Stanton would have been particularly glad 
to let this sentence stand, and with it the historic conclusion 



134 WILLIAM STANTON 

It was all good work, and it was very interesting 
work; though of course, like all work, it had its 
monotonous side too. Yet there is an exultation 
about the work of a priest that perhaps no other 
work in the world has. He wields a tremendous 
power, the power indeed of God, his Master: and 
at times he is jolted out of the rut of whatever 
monotony may lay hold upon him, by the astounding 
effects of that power. Many a young priest loses 
his head temporarily in the beginning of his 
ministry, and is poured out like water; he makes 
us think of the disciples who came back to our Lord 
after their first mission, all excited, crying out, 
*' Lord, in thy name we have cast out devils, and 
healed the sick ! " — and of the quiet rebuke that 
Jesus gave them. Well, it is a pardonable fault, 
if it do not become permanent. 

Fr. Stanton too felt the thrill of his priestly work, 
and exulted in the success that God gave to such 
efforts as he could put forth; but it did not go to 
his head. He had, of course, the almost extremely 
conservative tradition of the Society back of him, to 
steady him. His was an anomalous position for a 
Jesuit, to be thrust at once after ordination into the 

that Archbishop Harty was an extraordinary man. But his 
extraordinariness is quite the ordinary in a Church which 
shirks no duty. 



THE PRIEST 135 

full tide of a priest's activity; and his letters make 
it clear that he discounted the fact cannily enough. 
He knew that ordinarily, before his real work as a 
priest would begin, he should have a very important 
special year of training to go through, which would 
induct him gradually into his new duties and do 
about as much as is humanly possible to preclude 
gaucheries and mistakes in their fulfilment. It was 
impossible, obviously, for him to enter just then 
upon that training. But it was only deferred, not 
omitted. The Society properly sets great store by 
what it calls its " third year of probation." 

Fr. Stanton expected to leave Manila for his 
*' third year " in the summer following his ordina- 
tion. However, when this time came, the reduced 
condition of the staff at the Observatory necessi- 
tated another postponement. He was rather disap- 
pointed ; not that he had any wild longing for a year 
of seclusion ; but because it had to be gone through 
some time, and he wished to have it over — he was 
a normal, human man. But he did have a very sen- 
sible appreciation of the value of the " third year " : 
an appreciation which its difficulties would, for him, 
not at all dim. There is a good deal of banter, but 
a good deal of earnestness too, in his writing to a 
class-mate doing his " third year " at the time : 



136 WILLIAM STANTON 

" November lo, 1903. 

". . . How I envy all you fellows the placid, ethe- 
rialized atmosphere of the holy ' house of bread/ 
whilst here I am, the same old Buck, after fourteen 
years of knocking about in all four quarters of the 
civiHzed and uncivilized globe, still engaged head and 
heels in such vulgar, mundane occupations as signing 
cheques for filthy lucre, pounding away at a typewriter, 
and messing about amongst a lot of bugs ! I hope it 
is not presuming to ask you to remind all the old fel- 
lows of our class, who in company with you are now 
regaling themselves in the rich pastures near the 
verdant summits of the mountains of asceticism, to 
breathe a silent prayer for the conversion of a poor, 
dull mortal grovelling down here in the dark valleys 
below. 

" How angelic must be the olive-tinted countenance 

of little B , under the sanctifying influence of dear 

old Florissant! And modest little T with his 

sidelong hop and dove-like demeanor, what a model 
the holy novices have before their eyes! And what 
samples of exquisite gravity they have before them, 

as Long John and Tommy W shoulder their 

brooms in * manualia ' or glide over the refectory floor 
with a trayful of dishes ! " . . . 

And so the letter goes on, full of chaffing ; yet of 
something deeper than any chaffing : a man's way of 
saying a serious thing without blaring it. 

It was settled that, when he should go to his 
" third year," he was to go to Spain, in order that 
he might incidentally perfect himself in his knowl- 



THE PRIEST 137 

edge of Spanish. He mentions this repeatedly. 
But he was not thinking of Spanish for the Phihp- 
pines, but for his old mission in Central America. 
Towards the end of 1903, he writes to his successor 
in Belize, now at his theology in St. Louis, urging 
him to propose coming with him to Spain. 

". . . It is the only way to learn to speak the lan- 
guage. Then we would be ready to sail together for 
the land of the mahogany. I think we should make a 
good pulling team for the backwoods of the Cayo. Of 
course I had expected to beat you back there by several 
years at least, but ' man proposes and God disposes.' " 

British Honduras was still in his heart. The 
program was, Spain for the '' third year,'' then back 
to " the bush." Another year went by in Manila, 
crowded with work, and the summer of 1904 came 
on. On May 5, he writes to his aunt: 

" I have just returned from a trip to the Visayan 
Islands, where I have been inspecting our meteorologi- 
cal stations in those regions and setting up a system 
of typhoon signals at various ports. After my official 
work was done, I always managed to round up our 
Catholic soldiers. . . . 

" Time is flying, and I am getting ready for my de- 
parture. I shall leave Manila some time between the 
5th and loth of June. I take the SS. Mongolia from 
Hongkong on June 15th. From there we go to 
Shanghai, thence to Japan, thence to San Francisco 



138 WILLIAM STANTON 

by way of Honolulu. We ought to make San Fran- 
cisco by the middle of July. As soon as I arrive I 
shall let you know whether I must go directly to St. 
Louis or may take a southern route and pass through 
San Antonio. Pray for my safe passage. . . ." 

He did visit San Antonio, Texas, whither his 
family had removed, and then came on to the head- 
quarters of his province, St. Louis, before setting 
out for Spain. The Manila episode was over. 



CHAPTER IX. 

I hope that no one who has become in any way- 
interested in Fr. Stanton will skip this chapter. It 
will be the hardest his biographer has to write. It 
will be very largely unintelligible to most non- 
Catholics: a mere jumble of monkish foolery. But 
to those who understand, it may be the most signifi- 
cant chapter in the book. Here, if anywhere, if the 
author can express it at all, lies the heart of Stanton, 
the secret that gives meaning to what is otherwise 
only a commonplace life of a commonplace man, 
touched off with the cheap notoriety of petty travel 
and the superficial interest of strange places and 
peoples. For this chapter shall deal especially with 
that most elusive of all subjects, the relation of the 
man's soul to God. 

In the early part of September, Fr. Stanton sailed 
from New York in the SS. Baltic. There were 
four Jesuits in the party, all bound for Spain. They 
travelled rather swiftly through Ireland, England, 
Holland, Belgium, up the Rhine to Mayence, 
through Switzerland, thence to Barcelona by way of 

139 



I40 WILLIAM STANTON 

Lyons. They had enough languages in the party to 
carry them comfortably, and they enjoyed the trip, 
with Fr. Stanton as the life of the party. He 
reached Manresa, near Barcelona, in the beginning 
of October. Here, in the Spanish house of third 
probation, he was to spend the ensuing ten months. 
A word about Manresa, before we go on to his 
life there. The place is, of course, inseparably 
linked with the memory of St. Ignatius Loyola. 
Here, for some eight or ten months, the Saint had 
lived after his " conversion," in a cave high up on 
the rocky face of a cliff almost overhanging the 
noisy little hill-stream, the Cardone, which flows 
through the town. Here he had written " The 
Spiritual Exercises." The place is sacred to his 
followers. The Society's house crowns the cliff, 
and is built down the face of it far enough to include 
the " holy cave," and the house is called La Santa 
Cueva. It is used exclusively for the young priests 
of the Society who are doing their last year of 
preparation ; though its little chapel, built out along 
the cliff as an extension of St, Ignatius' grotto, is 
open to worshippers from the town. There were 
in the house, in Fr. Stanton's time, forty- four " ter- 
tians," as the men in their third year of probation 
are called : men between thirty-five and forty years 



MANRESA 141 

of age, and representing half a dozen nationalities. 

Their life externally was very much like that of 
the novices; quiet, retired, with some study of the 
Institute of the Society; giving a short time each 
day to little, menial, household duties; chiefly de- 
voted to prayer and reflection. Do not think it a 
gloomy life. They are cheerful bodies, the ter- 
tians ; groaning whimsically at times, it is true, over 
their monotonous routine; looking forward often 
enough to the end of the year and their return to 
active life; but sensibly appreciative of their oppor- 
tunity, with the mixture of earnestness and light- 
heartedness which is the stamp of the religious. Fr. 
Stanton entered upon that life whole-souledly. He 
was tremendously in earnest, as his companions 
testify; but he was sane and balanced as ever. He 
indulged in no flights of fancy or emotional extrava- 
gances. But he did pray. 

What a thing that is, prayer ! To talk with God ! 
Prayer for a moment, the swift cry of the heart in 
need, in rejoicing — that is almost natural : '' lookin' 
at God, and sayin' a word to Him," as an old Irish- 
man put it. But deliberately to set one's self aside 
for prayer, to walk before the face of God day after 
day, to make a silence in one's heart where His voice 
may be heard — no wonder that is hard: it is al- 



142 WILLIAM STANTON 

most terrifying. Men who pray are like those who 
cHmb high mountains, where the air is dizzyingly 
rare, where the lungs gasp, where the will must sup- 
plement the bodily functions to live. One gets used 
to it in time, as one gets used to the mountain air; 
and then comes the vigour and the exultation of the 
high country. But no metaphor touches the reality 
of its hardships or of its glorious strength. We 
must have experienced it before we can understand 
it. We must have known its loneliness and its deso- 
lation and its astounding comfort. 

Prayer is no artificial posing, no oleaginous 
mouthing of pious platitudes, no windy self -com- 
muning or Pharisaical self-gratulation. It is not an 
emotional luxury, as the world so often thinks, not 
an emasculate occupation, to be left to women — 
" for men must work, and women must weep," or 
pray, as they will. To all who believe in God it is a 
necessity, at times a dreadful necessity, fierce as 
battle, with the roar of unseen worlds in our ears. 
If it is not to be " eat, drink, and be merry, for to- 
morrow you die," then we must pray. If life is a 
fight, this is one of our chief weapons. Prayer has 
in it all the mystery of the world to come, and all 
the practicality of this world. It is the bridge be- 



MANRESA 143 

tween the two worlds, the ladder of Jacob, the 
astounding commerce of man with God. 

I have no wish here to go deeply into the nature 
of prayer, nor to discuss the part of it that comes 
from God's initiative, so to speak. For the ordi- 
nary man, prayer is simply the acts of his own mind 
and will aided, of course, by God's ever-present 
grace. And ordinarily, a man needs to grow up be- 
fore he can learn to pray well; he must have felt 
himself, have sensed where he fits in the scheme of 
creation; his faith must have been exercised in the 
battering of the years; he must have tasted joys, 
and known failure, and made mistakes, and indulged 
selfishness in some measure, and repented, and been 
buffeted. He must have learned what a broken 
reed he is by himself. In this sense, the prayers of 
inexperience are the babblings of childhood. It is 
the strong man only who comes with broken, 
humble, thrilling speech before God. Work for 
women ! — it is almost a task for angels. 

Fr. Stanton was a grown man now, a man 
strong in the knowledge of his own weakness. 
Once more, as he had done when a novice, he went 
through the complete Spiritual Exercises. For 
thirty days, in entire silence, he gave up mind and 



144 WILLIAM STANTON 

memory and will to those simple, hard-headed, yet 
awful considerations : the dream that is terrify ingly 
practical. With the consciousness of standing 
naked in soul before Almighty God, he went back 
in thought over his life. God had made him, God 
had made all the world he lived in. God had given 
him his Christian parents, his vigour of body, his 
gifts of intellect and temperament, his opportunities 
of education, his graces, his vocation. The round 
earth swam before his eyes, a tiny whirling globe in 
the immensity of the universe: himself an infinites- 
imal figure crawling feebly on its surface. Yet the 
earth and the universe was for him. God had sent 
His Son here upon earth, to live, and to die, for him. 
God had established His hierarchical Church, un- 
dying, unchanging in truth, to shelter and guide and 
ward over him. God had a strange, incomprehensi- 
ble happiness waiting for him. It was all most as- 
tonishing, it was humanly incredible. And its very 
incredibility was a mark of its truth: men could 
never have invented such a concept. It was the 
sort of thing which a man could not help accepting; 
yet before which, to keep his sanity, he must in some 
sense shrug his shoulders. It was too big to try to 
fathom; to accept it was enough. Besides, when 
one looked for a reason for it all, the reason was 



MANRESA 145 

still more astonishing: that God loved him! loved 
him intensely, intimately, patiently, passionately! 
that for all He had given, He had still infinitely 
more to give! that He pursued him with kindness! 

To think over this day after day! to keep before 
his mind the comradely, human figure of Christ, 
who was the Infinite God — and his brother ! to see 
himself and all the world of men through the eyes of 
God! How simple was the wheeling mystery of 
life : for it all reduced to one supreme mystery, the 
love of God for men. Every command was to keep 
men from hurting themselves, from throwing away 
treasures for baubles. Every thrill of human happi- 
ness was the tiny analogue of an immense happiness 
to come. Every pain and weariness and heartache 
was " the shade of His hand, outstretched caress- 
ingly." Life was the little span, the hand-breadth 
of waiting before the gates of eternity: and death 
was the gasp of the spirit before it looked upon 
God, the lover of souls. 

Oh, it was good to live for that God, to work 
for Him, to help other men to see this vision! It 
was all so simple ! Yes, it might frighten a man a 
little to think of venturing at all into such an incom- 
prehensibly simple scheme. But that was God's 
way; He wanted men to help in it; He smiled at 



146 WILLIAM STANTON 

their shrinking fears — and what could a man do 
but smile back ! To do anything for Him, who had 
done everything for us ! If only He would let him ! 
Let him ! — why, God had invited him. That was 
what it meant to be a Jesuit, to be a priest : to help 
God, to help Him spread happiness and love over the 
world. 

A month of this, did I say? A month, when his 
comrades saw him constantly in the chapel, before 
the Blessed Sacrament — God amongst men, the 
Christ of Galilee hidden in a mystery; when his com- 
rades marvelled at his entire preoccupation, at his 
quiet, unruffled absorption in his own thoughts? 
Put it down as ten months, rather. For the re- 
maining nine months of the tertianship were only a 
continuation of that first. Oh, he wasn't a mystic. 
Nor did he go about dreaming. He shouldered his 
broom with the rest of them, and swept unmention- 
able insects out of the chapel along the cliff, and 
made jokes about them ; and ate heartily afterwards ; 
and went for long tramps in the hills whenever he 
was given a chance — and got lost, as usual, and 
came home late, and got a wigging ; and had a family 
of lizards and bugs and things in his room, like the 
great boy that he was ; and studied the technicalities 
of the Institute, and practised his Spanish; and was 



MANRESA 147 

still " Buck " Stanton. But the fire that had burned 
in his life deepened its glow, and he rambled and 
worked and chatted and laughed with the vision of 
Christ before him, and a hunger in his heart to do 
Christ's work among men. He hated religious os- 
tentation now as much as ever ; but he slipped round 
to the chapel the moment he was free from other 
duties. It is not shocking at all — quite a normal 
touch of human nature — to say that many of the 
Spaniards, with their well-merited pride of race, 
rather looked down upon the free and semi-heretical 
Yankees : not in any unpleasant way, but quite in a 
taken- for-granted manner, as the sons of a hundred 
generations in the Faith upon these offspring of yes- 
terday in a savage land. But your Spaniard, even 
when a Jesuit, is a singularly honest man, and in no 
great time his Spanish comrades doffed their hats 
to Fr. Stanton's religious character. (They at- 
tributed it to his Irish ancestry.) The other 
Yankees were made aware of their respect; but there 
might have been a row if it had come to his ears. 

His was a faith in God that had always been 
strong and clear, from boyhood; but henceforth it 
was to rule his life with a singular vividness and 
completeness. He was now a man consecrated to 
God's work, not with any sense of giving on his 



148 WILLIAM STANTON 

part, but with the eagerness of one who knows that 
work to be a privilege. There is ordinarily a cer- 
tain exaggeration in saying that a man divests him- 
self of all selfishness; but it becomes strikingly true, 
when a man has so envisaged himself and all the 
world in their relation to God as to see no purpose 
really worth while except God's purpose. Then 
God's interests become his interests. The man 
seeks himself still, as he must by his very nature, 
but he seeks himself in God. His success is to see 
God's plan succeed; his delight is in the happiness 
that he can help to promote amongst men ; his burden 
is the burden of all the world; and his glory is the 
glory of God. So Fr. Stanton learned to see and 
to seek, in Manresa. 

It is hard to write of such things. What illumina- 
tive details we have are very sacred to the man ; 
there is a sort of desecration in speaking of them. 
The effect of it all must be read in his life, blunder- 
ingly pieced together out of little acts of self-immo- 
lation. As the year went on, he had to consider 
what might be his actual field of endeavor for God. 
Fr. Algue wanted him back in Manila. His place in 
the Observatory was waiting for him. The work 
was congenial, the surroundings pleasant. There 
was a splendid opening for his ambition as a 



MANRESA 149 

scientist. He had letters from high officials, ex- 
pressing the hope that he would return. He had 
many friends in Manila; he would enjoy excellent 
society; he was assured of comfortable material con- 
ditions. And withal, he could do a great deal of 
work for souls too. Then he thought of the Indians 
down in Central America, a half -civilized people, a 
singularly uninteresting people, not so very numer- 
ous, a small field for his activity. Prudently, he 
talked the matter over with one or two, asked ad- 
vice of his director. He heard the usual things: 
men are needed in the great centers, his exceptional 
scientific gifts and equipment marked him out for 
fine work in entomology, he had the character to im- 
press educated men and women, other less talented 
men might look after the Indians just as well, — 
he should go to Manila. You may see a good deal 
of what his year in Manresa was, from his conclu- 
sion in the matter. 

He wrote to his provincial in St. Louis, laying 
the question before him. As he said in his letter, 
he had noticed " that our Lord, when on earth, had 
always had the keenest eye out for the chap who was 
in most need." In Manila there were plenty of 
priests, and others willing to go there; there was a 
sufficiency, if not an abundance, of money too. In 



I50 WILLIAM STANTON 

Central America there were very few priests, and 
not many who were wilHng to go ; and the Httle mis- 
sion was as poor as Job's turkey. Without any 
cant or show, he asked his provincial to send him to 
Central America. Then he sat back and waited for 
his decision. He had chosen according to his lights ; 
let God do the rest. 

On June i8, 1905, he wrote to his aunt: 

" Cueva de San Ignacio, Manresa. 

" My dearest Aunt : I received your last welcome 
letter in due time, but have delayed until now to 
answer, because I had no definite news to tell you. On 
Pentecost Sunday, however, I received from my pro- 
vincial one of the most welcome letters I have ever re- 
ceived in my life. In it he tells me that it has been 
decided that I am destined to found a new mission in 
the Cayo district of British Honduras, among the 
abandoned tribes of Maya and Lacandon Indians there. 

" What greater favour could the Lord bestow on me 
than to choose me for such apostolic work ! And what 
greater joy for a son of Ignatius and a brother of 
Francis Xavier and Peter Claver and a thousand other 
missionaries of the Society, than to be allowed to give 
his life and strength to save the souls of poor aban- 
doned Indians in the forests and jungles of Central 
America! Well, it has been my constant prayer for 
many years that the Lord might give me such a voca- 
tion, and it seems He has heard my prayer. I am sure 
you will rejoice with me, and give thanks to God for 
such a blessing. . . ." 



MANRESA 151 

It is almost distressingly outspoken for a man 
of his spiritual reticence. But then, you see, he 
was a little bit beside himself with delight; and a 
man gets reckless then. 

Does it sound like a man who had become some- 
thing of a visionary, who had lost a little of his 
humanness in the rapture of an exalted, supreme 
ideal? If it does, we have misunderstood him. 
The same letter goes on with boyishly affectionate 
plans for running around to San Antonio on his way 
through the States to Central America, and is full of 
tender, playful concern in all the minutiae of his 
family's life. But he was never to see the dear aunt 
again, nor any of his family, until he lay upon his 
death-bed, years after. 



CHAPTER X 

The end of July saw the close of the tertianship, 
and Fr. Stanton and his companions set out on 
their return to the States. They visited, en route, 
Gandia, the old home of St. Francis Borgia, Pam- 
plona and Loyola and Lourdes; and came through 
Paris to London. Here Fr. Stanton delayed about 
six weeks, studying entomology and the like in the 
British Museum and the South Kensington. It was 
not a great deal of time, but he knew quite definitely 
what he wanted to look up, and he worked very 
hard, gathering notes on Philippine insects and on 
some of the tropical fauna of Central America. He 
crossed in the Cunard SS. Umbria, reaching New 
York on September 27,, and was in St. Louis by the 
end of the month. 

From the time he had first learned his destina- 
tion, he had planned to visit his family in San 
Antonio, on his way to Belize. But in St. Louis 
he was told that yellow fever had broken out in 
New Orleans which was in consequence quarantined, 
and that he must therefore sail from Mobile. More- 

152 



BRITISH HONDURAS AGAIN 153 

over, a party was waiting for him; their steamer 
was scheduled to sail on October 6; it was impos- 
sible to make the big detour around to San Antonio. 
" Man proposes, and God disposes " was at all times 
a favourite saying with him. He could say it again 
now, though this last disposition was particularly 
hard. At any rate, thank God, he had seen them 
all only a year before ; that was pretty good fortune, 
as things go with a Jesuit. He tried to cheer them 
under the disappointment, and hustled off to Mobile. 
After a rough, blustery passage in the Anselm — 
during which, as usual, he was sick enough — they 
landed in Belize on October 10. There were many 
who remembered him. His old boys, now grown 
into men, flocked around him. It was good to be 
with them again. He felt at home. But there was 
little time for chatting. His companions were as- 
signed to the college in Belize ; he was to strike out 
into the west of the Colony, to begin a new mission 
in the Cayo District. The Maya Indians at Benque 
Vie jo, on the Mopan River, had long been asking 
for a priest. The Vicar Apostolic in Belize, Bishop 
Hopkins, had promised to send them one when he 
could. But all his priests were, like himself, Jesuits ; 
and he had to wait until he could coax another man 
out of the Missouri Province. In the meantime, he 



154 WILLIAM STANTON 

had urged the people of Benque Vie jo to build a 
church. They had been three years at it, and now 
it was ready; and Fr. Stanton was to take charge 
of it. 

Three days after his arrival in Belize, he wrote 
to his aunt : 

''. . . I am busy these days trying to gather together 
a few of the most essential articles for my priestly 
work and for my house, as there is absolutely nothing 
there yet, not a vestment or ornament for the church, 
nor a pan or kettle for the house. But there is no 
doubt but Providence will gradually provide in one way 
or another for what is most necessary. My poor 
Mayas up there have little or nothing, but are begging 
for a priest, and so we must make a beginning. I must 
open the mission alone, but it is the Lord's work, and 
He is just as near one in the forests and lagoons of the 
Cayo as on your neat asphalted streets of San Antonio. 
... Of course there is no regular mail service up to 
my mission, but if mail is sent for me to St. John's 
College, Belize, it will reach me. 

" I ask you all to pray that God may bless my work 
amongst the Mayas. . . ." 

He gathered together some tinned provisions, a 
few cooking utensils, one set of white vestments, 
two altar stones, and a few other odds and ends. 
In a week or so more he was ready to start. The 
Bishop accompanied him, to introduce him to his 



BRITISH HONDURAS AGAIN 155 

new flock. It was the middle of the Rains, and the 
river was in flood. That gave them a hope of 
getting up the better part of the distance by gaso- 
Hne launch. They started out bravely, and as the 
current was not so strong in the lower reaches of 
the river, they made thirty-five miles the first day, 
and tied up to the bank for the night. The next 
morning the pin holding the flywheel of the engine 
broke, and they had to wait whilst the engineer 
sawed a new pin out of a piece of iron. 

As they passed little villages, most of them with 
outlandish names, the people begged them to stop 
and baptize their babies, but they were hurrying, 
and the Bishop promised to attend to them all on 
his way back. They feared the flood would go 
down in the river, when they would have to take to 
" pitpans," the long, native canoe, hollowed out of a 
couple of tree trunks, and their journey up river 
would run to weeks instead of days. The third 
day the river did begin to fall rapidly, and by even- 
ing had gone down about two feet. They met 
rapids in the upper river, and had to pole their 
launch through. That day Fr. Stanton, perched, 
pipe in mouth, on the bow of the launch, shot four 
alligators with his rifle. But at last, on October 2^, 
they reached the Cayo, which was as far as the 



156 WILLIAM STANTON 

launch could possibly go. Above this the Mopan 
was full of falls and rapids. Their goods had to be 
transported the rest of the way by land. 

At the Cayo, the District Commissioner, Mr. 
Robert Franklin, welcomed them, and gave them the 
hospitality of his house. The Alcalde, or Mayor of 
the town, lent Fr. Stanton four cargadores (port- 
ers) to carry his possessions to Benque Viejo. The 
Bishop and Fr. Stanton stayed several days to at- 
tend to the spiritual wants of the six hundred 
Catholics in the Cayo; then they set out on bor- 
rowed horses for Fr. Stanton's headquarters at 
Benque Viejo. We may quote the rest from his 
letter home : 

*'. . . We rode four hours in the rain through the 
tropical jungle, along winding paths called roads, 
where the horses often sank almost to their bellies in 
the sticky mud. Toward the end of the journey it 
stopped raining, and we were met at the Indian town of 
Succotz, a mile from our destination, by the Alcalde 
and the village band, i.e., three Indians with very long 
wooden flutes and a guitar. 

" The whole town turned out to see us. They pre- 
sented us with a milky drink made of crushed sweet 
corn, some freshly laid eggs, and oranges. The poor 
people offered us the best they had. They told us how 
glad they were to have a padre come to live amongst 
them. 



BRITISH HONDURAS AGAIN 157 

" We soon passed on to Benque Vie jo. They had 
been warned of our coming, and half a mile away we 
were met by about a hundred little Indian children, 
who sang us a song of welcome, kissed our hands, and 
then marched in front of us into the village. 

" I have about eight hundred people here at Benque 
Viejo. They are Maya Indians. Some talk a little 
Spanish, but most of them only Maya, which I studied 
when I was in the mission the first time. My district 
comprises over thirty villages, and I am the only priest ; 
so you see I have work before me. Some of the vil- 
lages have such nice names : Succotz, Coquericot, 
Monkey Run, Young Gal, Yaalbaac, Holotonich, 
Kaxivenic, Pull Frock, Duck Run, Pull-and-be-Damn 
Rapids, etc. 

" My people in Benque Viejo are building me a fine 
house, quite a palace for this region, about 15x30 
feet, walls 10 feet high, built of sticks plastered with 
mud, with a high sloping roof of palm leaves. It will 
be all in one room, and the floor of clay. Just now I 
am living in a borrowed house. I cook my own break- 
fast, but one of the women cooks me the principal meal 
once a day, and everything is going along well. 

'* No time to write more, as I want to send this by 
an Indian who is going to the Cayo to-day. . . ." 

In the meantime the river had fallen so much that 
no launch could get to the Cayo, and the Bishop re- 
turned to Belize in a small dorey — a smaller craft 
than a pitpan, hollowed out of a single log. 

Fr. Stanton's position in Benque Viejo was really 
one of destitution. But he was as cheerful as a lark 



158 WILLIAM STANTON 

about it all. He did write a begging letter to St. 
Louis University (which we shall cite directly), but 
forgot to send it, and discovered it only when he 
was *' cleaning house " about a month later. How- 
ever, as his more pressing needs began to clamour, 
he asked his brethren in Belize to help him, out of 
their own poverty. But we shall see that his de- 
mands were singularly modest. He writes to a 
Father in Belize : 

*' The Inland Summer Resort, 

" Benque on the ^lopan, 

Nov. 29, 1905. 

" My dear Father B 

" P.C. 

" Cheer up, old man, wipe away the memories of the 
sabanones of ]\Ianresa and the prickly heat of Belize, 
and take a trip to beautiful Benque on the shady banks 
of the roaring Mopan. The Padre's house is progress- 
ing poco a poco according to the costumbre del pais. 
Last week they filled in the framework of the walls 
with thin poles freshly cut from the bosque. To-day 
they have started the plastering or filling in between the 
poles. This is Benque Viejo plaster: we believe in 
fostering home industries here, and everything in the 
building of our houses is home-grown. A hole is dug 
in the side of the hill on which the house stands, the 
mud is brought up into the house, mixed with water 
and chopped up green grass, and smeared on the poles 
by hand. 

" After the plastering is finished inside and out, they 



BRITISH HONDURAS AGAIN 159 

will begin on the clay floor. When this is well 
pounded and levelled, it must rest for a couple of weeks 
to harden. In the meantime the doors and windows 
are to be made, and this is the hardest part of the 
building, as the boards have all to be made by hand. 
The thatch roof is already finished. The final touch 
will be the whitewashing inside and out, and then the 
most handsome palace in Benque will be done. They 
hope to have it ready for occupancy by New Year. 
Then we shall welcome tourists from Belize — pro- 
vided they bring their own hammocks. 

" My cook is sick now, and I am playing cook myself 
for a few days. My ordinary bill of fare is not 
exactly sybaritic, but it is all right for one with a cast- 
iron stomach and a good appetite. I went out the 
other day and shot a squirrel and a toucan, and saw the 
tracks of deer, peccary, and a huge tiger, but didn't 
see the beasts. Fresh meat is hard to get. They kill 
pigs and beef occasionally in Plancha Piedra, over in 
Guatemala, and we buy it at five reals a pound. Eggs 
are not to be had for love or money in Benque. Noth- 
ing but pigs, goats, and garrapatas raised in the town. 

*' Just wait till the Padre gets his house and garden 
in running order, and Benque will have vegetables, 
chickens, and eggs. Positively the only vegetable 
grown here is a sort of round, small squash. . . . 

" Lo and behold! I have just now received a letter 
from Franklin telling me of a cutting scrape in S. Jose. 
He starts for the scene to-morrow, and asks me to come 
along — woman cut — will probably die. Shall go, of 
course — first sick call in Cayo mission — good be- 
ginning — five or six days journey going and coming 
— look at your map and find S. Jose, up near boundary 



i6o WILLIAM STANTON 

of Orange Walk District. Shall be glad of the chance 
to take in on the way Yaalbaac and several other 
places. 

'' Excuse my abruptness, as it is late at night and I 
must get ready for my trip in the morning. To save 
postage and time, let me just jot down a few things I 
shall need before long, so that you may try to get them 
for me at the first opportunity. 

" I. A spade, hoe, and rake, for garden use. 
" 2. A carpenter's chisel, plane, brace and 2 bits. 
" 3. Four brass shells for reloading (12 bore) centre 
fire, with a few boxes of percussion caps to suit; 
some powder and shot — a few buckshot and a 
good supply of birdshot. (Paper shells get 
damp here and are apt to cause trouble.) 
"4. Seeds for garden. I should like to try ochra, 
gimibo, egg-plant, onions, the large sweet pep- 
pers, lettuce, beets, carrots, peas, tomatos, but- 
ter beans, muskmelon, and a good variety of 
squash. Any good fruit seeds or seeds of orna- 
mental plants would be acceptable. 
'* 5. A roll of barbed wire for fencing, to keep out 
quadrupeds and bipeds from forbidden pre- 
cincts. 
** Must finish in a hurry. Congratulations on your 
work with old boys and in college. Here I find that 
outside of Cayo and Benque practically everything is 
Maya and few of the people know anything else. If 
you speak Spanish they will say * si, si,* but they don't 
know what you're talking about till they get it in their 
own tongue ; then there is often quite a different song. 
" Remember me in the Holy Sacrifice, old man ; I 
need all the spiritual help possible. The field is fear- 



BRITISH HONDURAS AGAIN i6i 

fully wild; deplorable ignorance, superstitions, and 
deep-seated long-standing evil customs to be rooted out. 
But the grace of God is all powerful, and I have hopes 
of at least clearing off the timber and preparing the 
land for the sowers and reapers that may come after- 
ward." 

But he did not go to San Jose with the District 
Commissioner. Two days later, from the Cayo, 
he adds a note to the preceding letter, written on a 
torn half sheet of the D. C.'s official embossed paper : 

" Got as far as Cayo, but shan't get further this trip. 
The D. C. could not wait, had to start for S. Jose yes- 
terday morning instead of to-day, so I got left; but 
will make use of the time here very well. Shall return 
to Benque to-morrow evening. 

" But roads ! roads ! In this district they are simply 
unspeakable. You can have no idea of what roads are 
here, at least in this season. It is only a little over nine 
miles from Benque to Cayo, and a few days ago it took 
me five hours to do it on horseback, and yesterday 
again five and a half hours on a mule. Rain and the 
dark caught me in both instances, and I was alone — 
had no guide. It was so dark I could not see the 
horse's head, but my guardian angel finally brought me 
through all right. 

" There is no doubt, however, that I am built for the 
bush. My health is splendid. As for the climate of 
Benque, it is fine so far. Hot enough of course during 
the day, but the nights are cool, or rather cold. When 
I get up in the mornings my thermometer marks as 



1 62 WILLIAM STANTON 

low as 63 or even 60 F. I have been wrapping myself 

in Fr. W *s mackintosh and cassock and towels to 

keep warm. Finally I could not stand it at night, and 
I had to buy a blanket here in the Cayo — about four 
feet square — for which I paid $2.00 gold. 

" In Benque I haven't felt a mosquito and have never 
used my net. But here at Cayo there are clouds of 
mosquitos. The only beasts that bother me are the 
garrapatas (ticks). I have to spend from an hour 
and a half to two hours every day picking off ticks, 
and my whole body is thickly peppered with blotchy 
little sores where they have left their mark. But one 
can't expect to have everything his own way in this life, 
even in the paradise of Benque. 

" By the way, before I forget, would you try to send 
me a wash basin or bowl, of glazed metal. I have 
searched for one through Cayo and Benque in vain, 
and have nothing but the huge tin dishpan of the 
kitchen to wash my face in. It is a little inconvenient 
to scour the grease out of this every time I want to 
wash — and I don't want to fall into pure Spanish 
costumbres. I get a real bath in the rushing waters 
of the Mopan. 

" Tell the brothers, when sending things up to me, to 
pack them if possible in good kerosene boxes; first, 
because everything has to be carried on the backs of 
men from Cayo to Benque ; and secondly, because the 
boxes themselves are invaluable to me, as a board of 
any kind in Benque is as scarce as a snake in Ireland. 
Hasta otro rato ! " 

Whilst this letter does not say much directly, 
there is in it sufficient implication of rather primi- 



BRITISH HONDURAS AGAIN 163 

tive conditions. As a matter of fact, his house 
equipment might be listed very briefly. He had a 
packing case for table, and for chair a box that had 
held tinned goods. Some one gave him a native 
bed : four posts joined together by boards, with ropes 
crisscrossed from top to bottom, on which was laid 
a mat woven of palm leaves. He had a small kero- 
sene stove, one cup, one saucer, one plate, one glass, 
knife and fork and spoon, a skillet, a frying pan, 
and the very important dishpan. 

The District Commissioner came over to Benque 
Viejo one day, and called on Fr. Stanton. He was 
invited to stop and have tea. Fr. Stanton was cook. 
He chatted away, brewed his tea, put a nice clean 
newspaper on the packing case, and set the table, 
placing on it his lone plate and cup and saucer. 
When everything was ready, he drew up a couple of 
boxes, and seated himself cheerfully at the place 
where the dishes were. 

" Will you have sugar? " he asked the D. C. 

" Delighted ! " said his guest, holding out his 
hand, the palm cupped. 

" Good Lord ! " Stanton groaned. " That's what 
comes of living alone ! " He had his tea out of his 
tooth-glass. 

The D. C. was an enthusiastic admirer of Fr. 



i64 WILLIAM STANTON 

Stanton. Perhaps his admiration was the partial 
explanation of why he became a Catholic, not long 
after. 

His church was almost worse off than his house. 
In the letter to St. Louis University, just spoken 
of, he gives a few details : 

". . . When the provincial sent me, he told me to 
get down here and then squeal for what I needed. 
Well, I'm trying to squeal, but it's a long squeal from 
here to St. L. U. . . . For heaven's sake, try to get me 
a portable altar stone, with the necessary appurtenances. ■ 
I have forty stations to get around to. I have two 
altar stones, one at the Cayo, the other here at Benque. 
But they each weigh about fifteen pounds, and you can 
imagine what my one vestment looks like after it has 
been crushed up with one of them and a few more 
traps in my saddle-bags. . . . 

" Could you get me a few thin, light vestments, small 
metal cruets, etc.? And my big church at Benque — 
my sacristans using empty whiskey bottles for candle- 
sticks and flower vases, because we have nothing better 
— not a statue — four horrible, dirty chromos, falling 
to pieces, the only pictures in the church — no censer, 
nor cope, nor decent crucifix — antiquated, worm-eaten 
missal — no ciborium — no ostensorium — only one 
chalice, very clumsy to pack on horseback. . . . 

" I am not squealing for my own house, but for the 
Lord's. My good little mud house, with its hammock 
slung in a corner under the thatch, and a couple of 
packing cases for furniture, is quite a palace for these 



BRITISH HONDURAS AGAIN 165 

parts; even if the pigs and goats of the village do 
break in now and then to make a meal off one's old 
boots or the scabbard of one's machete. Two holes in 
one side, closed with wooden shutters, serve as win- 
dows. When it rains, I close them up and light a 
candle : glass is an unknown luxury here. 

" My bush church too is fine; same architecture as 
my house, only larger. In church, the men stand 
around the walls, whilst the women and children squat 
on the clay floor and the babies roll all over, garbed 
only in angelic innocence. . . . 

" I am well enough off, so far as board and lodging 
go; though our Benque menu might not suit every 
stomach. Tortilla, or corn-cake, is the chief stand-by 
— flour, when it can be had, is too dear (eighty-seven 
dollars Mexican a barrel, as last quoted). Rice and 
beans are the other staples — no green vegetables of 
any kind, except red-hot chile, which they eat with the 
leathery tortillas to make 'em go down — no eggs for 
love or money — meat scarce. . . . The bush has 
plenty of game, but it would mean a little work to get 
it, and work isn't on their programme here. 

** The talk about the weekly launch from Belize to 
the Cayo is somewhat of a joke. It gets up when 
there is a big flood on the river, and not otherwise. 
The Bishop and I were fortunate enough to get up 
a couple of months ago, and that is the last launch seen 
at the Cayo. The Bishop went home by dorey. 
Hence prices of provisions and stuffs of all kinds sent 
from Belize still hold their own — e.g., condensed milk, 
$1.00 a tin. So, blessed is the man who can live on 
bush products, and do without the frills. . . ." 

" P.S. Look at the date of this ! I thought it was 



1 66 WILLIAM STANTON 

in your hands weeks ago, and to-day in cleaning up I 
find it missed fire. Well, never mind! It's just as 
fresh as if done yesterday." 

Every letter of the time is perfectly cheerful, and 
shows him as contented and interested as a boy on 
a holiday. He refused to worry about anything; it 
was not his w^ay. But as a matter of fact, he had 
mighty little time for worrying, even if he wished 
to do so. He began at once to make the rounds of 
his enormous " parish " preaching in Spanish and 
Maya, baptizing, administering the other sacra- 
ments. From the very outset, God blessed his 
work. The people positively loved him. Within 
two months his sole name throughout the District 
was " El Padre Bueno," the Good Father. Per- 
haps most of the Indians never knew his family 
name ; his most official title being only " El Padre 
Guillermo." We may close this chapter with a 
letter to his aunt, which speaks of one of his mission 
trips. It is written from the Cayo, where he can 
never get paper, on the back of a blank govern- 
mental form for marriage certificate. 

" The Cayo, January 28, 1906. 
" My dearest Aunt : 

" Please excuse this letter paper. I am not at my 
home, and have a chance to send a letter from this 




CHURCH AT BENOUE VIEJO 




I) RKSn)ENCE AND THE NEW 
liEXQUE VlEJo 



BRITISH HONDURAS AGAIN 167 

point and don't want to neglect it. I have just come 
in here to-day after a twelve days' trip in a dorey, 
with two Indian companions, visiting the scattered por- 
tion of my poor flock along the wild banks of the 
Belize River. I have not had a chance to shave in 
all this time, so you can imagine my barbaric appear- 
ance. Add to this my already dark skin, blackened by 
exposure to our sun on the tropical river, and you may 
fancy I look like a pirate. The nights we spent in the 
open or in Indian huts. But thanks be to God I am 
as hale and sound as ever, and hope to get back to 
Benque to-morrow, after resting here to-night. You 
know my house is only a short four hours ride from 
here. 

'' This river is full of rapids, where we had to get 
out and haul the boat up through the water. But I 
had two good men with me, and no serious accident 
happened. . . . 

"Just got some mail, your letter and Mamie's 
amongst others. May the Lord repay you all. . . . 

" I enclose another letter, which has just come back 
to me. I wrote it to you on November 2, but I note 
from the envelope that in my absentmindedness I ad- 
dressed it to St. Louis instead of to San Antonio. Of 
course the post-office people couldn't find you, and so 
I get it back to-day. Well, I'll send it right this time, 
anyway. . . . 

" Be sure I did not forget you all on Christmas. It 
was a day of hard work for me, and my Christmas 
dinner wouldn't make anyone's mouth water. But I 
was really happy. I was doing God's work. And 
when I sat down, rather tired, and alone, in my hut to 
eat my Christmas dinner, I would not have exchanged 



i68 WILLIAM STANTON 

my lot for all the palaces in the world and all the fine 
things in them. . . . 

" Tell Uncle Lou there are plenty of deer down herei 
to shoot. I believe he once could handle a rifle. I 
saw one the other day in my path as big as a horse, 
but of course that day I did not have my gun along. 
But on this river trip I carried my gun, and nearly 
every day brought down some parrots and iguanas — 
which are big, green lizards, four or five feet long, 
that lie up in the trees overhanging the water, and are 
very good to eat. In this way I supplied fresh meat 
through the journey. . . ." 



CHAPTER XI 

The rains passed and the dry season began in 
Benque Vie jo. Fr. Stanton had visited most of the 
stations in his charge, making great circles of a few 
weeks at a time out from his home station. There 
is not a whisper of complaint from him. Yet the 
work was extremely hard, and results slow in com- 
ing. The people liked him, it is true, but they had 
difficulty about approaching the sacraments. And 
loneliness began to prey upon him. For nearly 
four months he had not seen a white man, save for 
the very occasional meetings with the District Com- 
missioner. That meant more than one may realize 
to a companionable man. It was no natural en- 
thusiasm that kept him up. Indeed, the effort to be 
always cheerful cost him more than he knew. But 
it was a successful effort. And he rightly thanked 
God for it. 

His house was to have been ready by the new 
year. But he was in the land of mafiana, where the 
rule is " never do to-day what you can put off to to- 
morrow." The new year came, and the month of 

169 



I70 WILLIAM STANTON 

January and half of February passed, before his 
" convento," as the Indians called it, was finished. 
On the 15th of February he moved into it: an easy 
task as may be imagined. He slung his hammock, 
set up his mat bed for visitors, threw his saddle- 
bags and gun in the corner, rolled the packing case 
to the middle of the floor — and it was all done. 
He had bothered very little about the house, leaving 
the townfolk to take their own time about it. But 
in the end he was very glad it was ready, and eager 
enough to get into it, for he was to have a 
companion. Another Father was coming. And 
though he scarcely gave a thought to his own wants, 
beyond the most elementary necessities, he was 
anxious to have everything as comfortable as might 
be for the new-comer. He even nailed a sort of 
back-rest to one of his boxes. 

And he was not a day too soon ; for on February 
1 6th Father Robert Henneman rode up to his door 
in Benque. Fr. Stanton was jubilant. They were 
old friends ; Fr. Henneman w^as a stalwart worker, 
a genial companion, a lively, hustling man. They 
cooked a meal between them, and ate, and smoked 
and laughed and planned until the dawn was flush- 
ing the east, and boasted about their fine quarters, 
and fought generously over who should have the 



BENQUE VIEJO 171 

bed. And when finally Fr. Stanton climbed into 
his hammock, and pulled his " four foot square " 
blanket about him, he was the happiest man in the 
Cayo District. Everything was going to go splen- 
didly now. They v/ould divide the work between 
them, and there would always be some one at home 
to look after the people of Benque and answer the 
emergency sick-calls in the District. Of course, it 
hadn't been really hard before, but it would be a 
" circus " now. But Fr. Henneman noted how the 
long isolation from his own kind had played on his 
nerves ; he had been living on his capital. 

Fr. Stanton remained in Benque a short time, to 
help his companion to get used to the people and 
their ways, before starting out to visit his stations. 
His stay was prolonged until the end of the month 
by an accident. Whilst chopping wood for their 
breakfast one morning, just after his Mass, he 
chopped off part of a finger on his right hand. He 
made no fuss about it, and bandaged it up with a 
bit of cloth. But a little Indian who had seen the 
accident ran into the church and called Fr. Henne- 
man, who hurriedly put some carbolic acid on the 
wound. It burned him fearfully, but he pooh- 
poohed the whole thing; and eventually the finger 
healed up. In a few days more he set out on his 



172 WILLIAM STANTON 

rounds of the villages. Passing through the Cayo, 

he hastily took the chance of writing to the English 

scholastic who had been his companion part of the 

time in Manila. 

" The Cayo, March 5, 1906. 
" My dear Mr. Brown : P. C. 

" I have just received your thrice welcome letter to- 
day when I came into the Cayo, and don't want to let 
the chance pass to answer at once, as a pitpan will soon 
leave here for Belize and this letter must catch it. 
Excuse haste, paper (no other at hand here), and 
everything. Moreover, if my penmanship is worse 
than usual (supposing such a thing possible!), it is 
because I am writing under difficulties, having man- 
aged to chop off with a hatchet, three days ago, the 
first joint of third finger of right hand, when trying 
to gather wood to cook breakfast. It is beginning to 
heal up all right, and I can use, as you see, the remain- 
ing fingers pretty well. 

" I have been four months alone with my Indians — 
with forty pueblos to look after. I have managed al- 
ready to visit thirty of these stations, taken the census 
of every house, and started work in some of the more 
accessible villages. Talk about spiritual abandonment ! 
Just think, I was the only priest in a region fully as 
large as Luzon (Cayo District and Peten in Guate- 
mala), populated by Maya and Lacandon Indians, with 
a sprinkling of Caribs and Creoles along the Belize 
River. So you see I don't have to look for work. . . . 

" Entomological work under the circumstances in 
Manila was certainly sweet to the natural man, and I 
may as well confess to a very strong temptation to 



BENQUE VIEJO 173 

return. But during the tertianship I had time to weigh 
calmly both sides in the balance. I could not in con- 
science do otherwise than present my case to superiors, 
telling them my preference, but at the same time asking 
them finally to decide for me. And so here I am, 
buried in these inaccessible forests and swamps, but 
perfectly happy, and with a feeling of entire security 
that it is the Lord's work I am at and no self-seeking. 
There is httle danger of vanity here, as from the bird's- 
eye view I have taken of the situation, the work 
humanly speaking must be extremely slow of results 
and the fruit reaped years after — when I am paying 
my debt in purgatory. . . . 

" Though, as you may imagine, I am pretty much on 
the go, I have found time to start a garden (all my own 
labour, of course) with seeds sent me from the States, 
and have already the ordinary vegetables coming up 
nicely. I am also starting to plant the tropical fruits, 
etc. And now that I am writing, I wish to beg you or 

Fr. S to send me seeds from Manila, especially 

ilang-ilang, native and Chinese, champaca, betel-nut, 
cinnamon, native and Indian, stercularia, and any other 
Philippine or East Indian fruits or flowers — not for- 
getting the diminutive orange (red when ripe, and as 
big as a cherry) common in the garden. I have al- 
ready growing, coffee, cacao, avocado, anonas, etc. 

Shall send Fr. S the vanilla, which I have also ; it 

is common in the woods, but does not fruit at this time 
of year. Hope to write to him when I get time. 

" Bugs ? Yes, millions, but no time to consider them 
scientifically yet — hymenoptera too, terrible pests 
amongst Formicidae — had to fight Atta lebasi, one of 
the ' parasol ants,' three nights in succession to prevent 



174 WILLIAM STANTON 

them from running off with a whole barrel of corn 
inside my house. Ticks and fleas — covered with them 
every day — whole body like small-pox patient from 
ticks. Within last two days had thirty-seven ' jiggers ' 
extracted from my feet. This tropical American bur- 
rowing tick is certainly a caution ! Even one is enough 
for an experience, but this last dose of thirty-seven 
has left my feet as if I had put them up as a target for 
a dozen loads of bird-shot. The holes are still raw 
and bleeding, but I hope to be back at Benque soon, 
when I shall dose them with oil and prepare them for 
another go. I have only been stung once by a scorpion 
whilst here. So you see I haven't lost my love for 
the bugs, nor they theirs for me. But before the end 
I'll get after them with my cyanide bottle if they don't 
look out. 

" Bravo ! Bravo ! old man, I told you there was a 
mine to be found in the Philippine hymenoptera. 
Keep it up, and keep me posted of all your successes. 
I shall send you my notes on the order as soon as I 
have time to unpack them and get them off. ... I 
hope I shall be able to help you with some specimens 
from this part of the world after a while, when I shall 
have settled down. 

'* A thousand thanks for all the news about the 

brethren in Manila. Good old C ! How I should 

enjoy another glimpse of his ascetic mug! Tell him 
I offer him the ministership of the Benque residence, 
which is a tempting offer for a minister, as the meat 
bill will not be large. The Benque community hasn't 
seen fresh meat for over six weeks. Assure him that 
the * majadero ' who perfumed the retired corner of 
the * cementerio de Calixto * with his pipe instead of 



BENQUE VIEJO 175' 

with his virtues, is trying his best to hold aloft * la 
cruz, la cruz ' amongst the poor benighted Mayas of 
the Mopan, but that he feels lonesome for the ' aUoli ' ! 
" Wish I had time to write more. Any way, my 
crippled hand is getting tired. Salute in my name 
all the good fathers, scholastics, and brothers in 
Manila. . . ." 

His Cayo stationery was always weird; this last 
was written on a bit of wrapping paper, that had 
come about a magazine. He had to write as occa- 
sion offered, and could not carry paper about with 
him. Besides, he was forever losing such things as 
he did carry. 

His garden was a delight to him, and a source of 
marvel to the Indians. His aunt and sister kept 
him supplied with seeds and added implements as 
he needed them. Indeed they were his chief sup- 
port in every way, particularly in the beginning. 
The Indians were poor, and could contribute little 
or nothing, nor were they always ready to do even 
the little they could. Fr. Henneman narrates a 
typical instance; of which, however, Fr. Stanton 
would not make mention in his letters; he always 
spoke most kindly of his Indians, and was almost 
too generous in finding excuses for them. 

" Succotz has a church dedicated to St. Joseph, 
and the people wished a novena preparatory to the 



176 WILLIAM STANTON 

feast, in March, 1906. Fr. Stanton was to say 
Mass every day at the village. We had no corn, 
and the Succotzianos had hundreds of bushels, 
which they were holding to boost the price (high 
finance in the bush!). Fr. Stanton asked them to 
sell him some. He explained the case to the Al- 
calde, and insisted on three sacks of corn. Only 
one was brought, and when the other two were not 
forthcoming, Fr. Stanton refused to continue the 
novena. He had forbidden the usual procession 
with a boar's head, before which they burned 
candles and incense and prayed — a relic of pagan- 
ism. When he did not come for Mass, the Suc- 
cotzianos determined they would have their proces- 
sion. The hog was killed, the biggest and fattest 
for many years ; but when he was cut open, he was 
found — to the dismay of the rebels — to be swarm- 
ing with worms. Then of course their superstition 
took another turn — * The curse of God ! ' they all 
cried out, and were ready to give in to the Padre. 
And, as Fr. Stanton remarked, it was St. Patrick*s 
Day in the Morning, March 17. But in the mean- 
time, the Succotzianos had sent a deputation to the 
District Commissioner, beseeching him to force Fr. 
Stanton to continue the novena. Of course he told 
them that the Government couldn't interfere in 



BENQUE VIEJO 177 

Church affairs, and added that, if they wanted his 
private opinion, it was : ' Si no hay mais, no hay 
misa ' — no corn, no Mass ! and they ought to be 
ashamed of their conduct." 

With such children as these one could not be 
angry; certainly Fr. Stanton never was. Even 
when he disciplined them, as he had to do from time 
to time, he was chuckling to himself. Only once 
or twice did he let his temper show, and then he was 
rather terrifying. The poor Indians went about 
awed, astounded over the incomprehensible change 
in " El Padre Bueno." They attributed it to the 
sun. He was infinitely patient with them, though 
he kept a firm hand too. He had a sort of dis- 
tinction between his personal patience and his 
severer official stand. In private, though he coaxed 
and pleaded with, he never snubbed those who were 
living in concubinage — the curse of the Colony. 
But as the first Holy Week drew on — to quote Fr. 
Henneman : 

" We announced on the two Sundays preceding 
that none but good Christians could march in the 
Palm Sunday procession. Fr. Stanton was dra- 
matic in his denunciation of * amancebados y con- 
cubinas.' It was a terrible blow to these people, 
who do love a procession. 



178 WILLIAM STANTON 

" Then came the day itself. Fr. Stanton offered 
to be celebrant, so that Fr. Henneman, whom the 
Indians called * el Padre bravo/ the violent Father, 
could manage the mob. It was clearly explained 
that all should march two and two. The children 
had been drilled for weeks, but it was impossible to 
get the women into any sort of order. Fr. H. 
shouted himself hoarse — ' Dos y dos ! Two and 
two ! ' — but there they stood, ten here, four there. 
Suddenly Father H. noticed that they were hold- 
ing hands in pairs, clinging to one another with a 
death grip — in pairs, but not in file. He rushed 
into the church to Fr. Stanton : * Tell me how to 
say, march two and two in ranks — or I'll burst ! ' 
To prevent the catastrophe, Fr. Stanton grinningly 
told him. Out rushed Fr. H. With much shout- 
ing, shoving, frowning, the procession got into 
line — they marched like grenadiers, Fr. H. pass- 
ing up and down along the line to keep it in order. 
Fr. Stanton said he could tell where Fr. H. was at 
any moment — as at that point there was a wild 
swerving, not to get too near to the Grand Marshal. 

" The amancebados hid in their houses, and the 
women wept bitter tears because they could not take 
part in the ' beautiful ' procession ; and after Easter 



BENQUE VIEJO 179 

the proclamation of marriage banns swelled to a re- 
markable number." 

He was very practical in his plans and methods. 
He studied the character and ways of his Indians 
unobtrusively, but keenly ; learned what motives ap- 
pealed to them, what were their prejudices, their 
superstitions, their local customs, religious, social, 
civil. It was slow work. The Maya Indian is a 
simple, quiet, inoffensive person (except, of course, 
when drunk — which he frequently is) ; but he is 
naturally reserved, and inclined to be suspicious of 
white men. He talks little at any time, but he 
closes up like a clam in the face of inquiries which 
he even suspects of bearing upon his tribal customs 
or beliefs. It is no little tribute to Fr. Stanton's 
character, and to his cleverness too, that in a few 
years he really knew his people. Of course, his 
comparative familiarity with their language aided 
him a great deal in this. But ultimately he 
succeeded because he made them his friends. They 
are ordinarily a most undemonstrative people; and 
it was a matter of wonderment to observers to see 
them rush out in delight to meet him. There is 
scarcely need to say that the children simply dogged 
his steps. 



i8o WILLIAM STANTON 

He wished very much to teach them habits of in- 
dustry; a thing for which the Indian has no love. 
His garden was begun with that purpose in view, 
quite as much as for its obvious need in his own 
living. He wanted to rouse their curiosity in the 
matter, as a step toward getting them to take up a 
similar activity. The first part of the program was 
a brilliant success. They never wearied of watch- 
ing him work — and they never offered to help him ; 
perhaps they were chary of depriving him of any of 
the pleasure he seemed to take in such a strange oc- 
cupation. After a while he got some of the boys 
interested, gave them seeds, and started them at 
cultivating small patches. Then the women, who 
had to do what field-work there was in any case, 
began to make little gardens. He encouraged them 
all, and meanwhile kept on with the good example 
in his own garden. But they advanced very slowly 
in their imitation. They made little spurts of a 
few days work, and then rested whilst the jungle 
crept swiftly back upon their gardens. A woman 
who was admiring the trim cleanness of his plots, 
asked him one day to what saint he prayed, that 
his garden should be so free from weeds. " Oh, 
a very powerful saint," he laughed. " El Santo 
Trabajo ! — Saint Hard Work! " And the woman 



BENQUE VIEJO i8i 

assured him solemnly that she had never heard of 
such a saint. Certainly, outside of the mission- 
aries* house there was no shrine to him in Benque 
Vie jo. 

After a few months, his garden quite supplied his 
table. More and more contributions came in from 
relatives and friends in the States. The church 
was fairly well equipped. He began to get books. 
He even got a real stove, though he could get no 
one to cook on it. They had never seen such a 
thing. When some one sent him a little piece of 
carpet, which he put in the center of their clay floor, 
his Indian visitors almost endangered his walls in 
their efforts to avoid treading on the beautiful thing 
on the floor. 

Writing to his sister, on March 26, to thank her 
for her latest gifts, he says : 

" I have just got out of the saddle after a hard three 
days* trip, but cannot go to bed without at least ac- 
knowledging your loving remembrances — as I hope to 
be able to send off some mail to-morrow to the 
Cayo. . . . 

** I came down into these almost inaccessible wilds 
with absolutely nothing but a strong reliance on 
Providence. But now, little by little, Fr. Henneman 
and I are receiving from friends many of the more 
necessary things for our churches and our work. Of 
course we must depend this way upon charity, because 



i82 WILLIAM STANTON 

our poor ignorant and abandoned Indians are miserably 
poor as a rule, living on corn and chile and occasional 
game, and it will necessarily be years before they will 
be able to support their own churches and provide them 
with the equipment needed. But it is God's work, and 
He will provide in one way or another. 

" My maimed finger is getting along well, but slowly ; 
and you see it does not hinder me from using a pen, 
though as yet I cannot use that hand for other work. 
My old left hand comes in mighty nicely now, and with 
my machete in this hand I can do more in my garden 
than any Indian around here can do with both 
hands. . . ." 

But he had not much time to enjoy what he called 
the " luxuries of Benque." It would be a conserva- 
tive estimate to say that he spent one third of his 
time in the saddle or in canoe, visiting his pueblos. 
His suberb physical constitution enabled him to go 
through with work and endure privation which 
would have soon killed another man. He gave no 
thought to his fatigue, and never spared himself. 
There was so much to be done, and he was im- 
patient to be about it. But withal, he was never 
a fussy worker, he had no nervous haste; but 
steadily, cheerfully, with persistent energy and zeal, 
he went about, exhorting, encouraging, coaxing, ad- 
vising his people, and administering the sacraments. 
He knew he was strong, and he taxed his strength 



BENQUB VIEJO 183 

to the utmost. There was no pose in his making 
light of discomforts and weariness; that was 
his honest way of looking at them. On June 4, 
1906, he wrote home: 

"... I have just returned from a river trip, after 
being away from home thirty-one days, moving about 
from place to place amongst my scattered people on 
the river banks and in the bush. Thanks be to God, 
I got back safe, to the relief of Fr. Henneman, who 
had not been able to hear from me during these days. 

" My health was good until the last week, when I 
got a little stroke from the heat, followed by several 
days' fever, which put me on my back for four days ; 
but I am now myself again. Fortunately, I was get- 
ting near my journey's end when I got the little attack, 
and as soon as I was able to get up, I left the Indian 
hut where I had been lying, and with the help of my 
two faithful Indian companions arrived safely in 
Benque, after three more days' travelling. I am all 
right now, the fever is gone, my finger is healed com- 
pletely, though the joint remains stiff and a little 
crooked. . . . 

'* Excuse my haste and brevity to-day, as I have a 
thousand things to attend to that have accumulated 
during my absence from home. But I wanted at least 
to send you a word, to let you know the Lord brought 
me back safe — though you would have to look twice 
to make sure of me now, with my black beard. Travel- 
ling about almost continually in the bush, I have so 
little chance to shave that I have finally given up and 
begun to let my beard grow. 



i84 WILLIAM STANTON 

" Don't forget my mission in your prayers. Love to 
all, especially the little ones. In haste. . . .'' 

One would never guess from this letter that it 
was written by a man still very sick, and that the 
last " three more days' travelling " so casually men- 
tioned had been three days of torture, when his 
Indians doubted if they should get him to Benque 
at all. His companion was shocked at his haggard 
appearance when he reached Benque, and wanted 
him to go to bed ; but he laughingly pitched in at his 
correspondence instead, and said bed could wait a 
while. He did rest for a few days, and with his 
wonderful recuperative power was really himself 
again in a short time. 

At home he slept little. He worked until mid- 
night at his letters, or at entomological work or his 
notes on the fauna of the Colony. He was up 
again at five in the morning, ran down to the river 
for a plunge, then went to the church for his medita- 
tion and Mass. He usually worked several hours a 
day, in the broiling sun, in his garden. Any old 
sort of food satisfied him, and he was very ab- 
stemious in the matter of drink. He smoked a pipe 
almost incessantly, using the raw, sun-cured native 
tobacco, which was remarkably strong. 

He had never worried in the least about money 



BENQUE VIEJO 185 

matters or his ways and means of living, partly 
from a simple faith and trust in God, but partly 
from a large, smiling incapacity for the minutiae of 
business affairs. He was a sort of superior at 
Benque, and was supposed to bear the responsibility 
of managing the place and its dependent stations. 
The Bishop, in the beginning, had made the people 
promise to pay their Padre something like twelve or 
fifteen dollars a month for his support. Fr. 
Stanton rarely got the money, hardly ever knew 
whether or not he had got it, and usually gave it 
away to the poorer people of the village when he 
did get it. Any sort of accounts were an annoy- 
ance and something of a puzzle to him. 

Fr. Henneman gives some instances of his busi- 
ness methods: 

" On his first trip around the pueblos, after I 
joined him, his expenditures far exceeded his in- 
come from the alms of the people. I ventured to 
remark that we could not well live that way. When 
he came home from the next trip, he triumphantly 
proclaimed that he was ahead this time. He 
brought out his memoranda, and began to figure out 
his receipts and expenses. After an hour or so, I 
found him still at it, and asked, * What is the 
trouble?' 



i86 WILLIAM STANTON 

" * Why, I think I have it now. I say, I believe 
I'm two dollars richer than when I left home! But 
it doesn't seem quite right.' 

" He read out his items, and I took them down. 
We found out that his expenses again exceeded his 
receipts. 

" ' Well, now, that's queer ! ' he said. 

" He rummaged around in his saddle bags a 
while, came back, and laid some money on the table. 

" ' But your accounts show you have a deficit of 
three dollars and some cents ! ' I exclaimed. ' Did 
you pay the men ? ' 

"'Why, of course!' 

" * And your bills for supplies ? ' 

" ' Every one ; there's nothing due ; that I'm sure 
of.' 

" I counted the money ; nearly five dollars. 

" ' There you are now ! ' he shouted gleefully. 
* Didn't I tell you I came out ahead this time ! ' " 



CHAPTER XII 

It is almost impossible, even by multiplied in- 
cidents, to give anything like an adequate idea of 
what his work was in the mission, of the constant 
hardships of that work, of its weary monotony. 
Fr. Stanton had always about him a touch of boy- 
ish romance. His imagination thrilled to the 
thought of the tangled woods, the great, rich 
silences of the tropics. He had a boy's delight in 
riding, in carrying weapons. We may fancy that 
during the years he was away from British Hon- 
duras these strands too were woven into the cords 
that drew him back. They were decidedly the 
lesser part of the attraction, but they were a part. 
He loved the open; he loved to think of himself in 
the dark forests, machete in hand, hacking his way 
through the matted bush, or swimming his horse 
across rivers or swinging a paddle in his canoe 
through the soft night; he could shut his eyes and 
see the moonlight on the river. But those dreams 
chilled swiftly in the face of reality. One ride 
through the bush may be a pleasant memory ; a score 

187 



1 88 WILLIAM STANTON 

of them, a hundred of them, become a nightmare. 
There may be exultation in the thought of dropping 
down the smooth river in a Httle dorey, with a gun 
at one's feet, and a quick eye for a toucan or iguana 
in the sweeping branches overhead. But there is 
only a world of weariness in body and soul, when 
day after day at the paddle has blistered one's 
hands, and the sun beats mercilessly down, and the 
glare on the river is blinding, and the chance of 
game to be shot has become only the dull question 
of whether or not one eats that day. Well, all work 
is monotonous; for all of us the glamour of the 
future slides imperceptibly into the dreary round 
of the present. Whatever natural charm the mis- 
sion had for him was soon lost ; there remained only 
its unrelenting toil, its loneliness, its endless struggle 
against the apathy and stupidity of his Indians, its 
privations, its weariness. 

His particular field was rather easily the hard- 
est in the mission. Its material conditions were 
the worst, its people the rudest, its extent the great- 
est. There were so many stations to be visited 
that, even though he had a companion in his district, 
they were seldom together ; he was constantly on the 
road, alone. In the beginning, he usually had a 
guide with him. Later, as he got to know the 



EL PADRE BUENO 189 

country better, he went alone, or at most had some 
boy along for company. He dreaded loneliness, 
though it was most often his portion; for his Indian 
companion was always taciturn. 

Very frequently he lost his way, even after he 
had spent years in the district. He rode often by 
compass. The trails were obscure, hard to find, 
hard to follow. Even the natives lose their way in 
those woods, where the faint paths, if untravelled 
for a few weeks, become so overgrown with bush 
as to be blotted out completely. He made little of 
having to dismount and walk ahead of his horse, 
to chop a path through the bush for himself and his 
beast. Often he passed the night in the forest, 
sleeping on the ground, with his saddle-bags for 
pillow. He admitted that, the first few times, he 
shared the Indians' dread of the " tigers,'* as they 
call the jaguars, which might come upon them as 
they slept. And, in the weariness of the actual, he 
so far forgot his boyish romance as to leave his 
rifle behind him half the time. But, as he said, 
" God was there too," and no harm ever came to 
him. 

It might be wearying to quote his letters of this 
time consistently. There is a good deal of same- 
ness in them, the record of a rather unvarying 



190 WILLIAM STANTON 

round of work. But we shall give some extracts, 

to show roughly a few details of that work. They 

are almost entirely from letters to his sister and 

aunt. 

" Benque Vie jo, Nov. 13, 1906. 

" I have been so busy the last few weeks that I have 
not had time even to think of writing to any one. It 
is near midnight now, but there is a chance to get a 
letter down to Belize to-morrow. . . . 

" I have been alone the past month. Fr. Henneman 
having gone to Belize for his annual retreat. In the 
meantime I am not only pastor but school-teacher as 
well, as I have been obliged to dismiss the Carib teacher 
I had for his misconduct, and have to carry on the 

Indian school we have here, until Fr. H brings 

another teacher. The devil is working very hard 
against us here amongst these poor creatures, and we 
have to fight a hard battle, but God will win out in the 
end. . . . 

" Here in Benque there are only two men who under- 
stand a little English, and one who can speak a few 
words of it. Everything is in Spanish or Maya — in 
most of the villages only Maya." 

"Jan. 16, 1907. 

". . . Here we are not only priests, we are the doc- 
tors, and the carpenters, gardeners, fence-builders, 
ditch-diggers, cooks, hostlers, saddlers, and everything 
else. We are beginning to get our place into some sort 
of shape — except our mud house, which will keep fall- 
ing down in the rain. My vegetable garden especially 
is the wonder of the country round about. 

" I have not been away from home, except on sick 



EL PADRE BUENO 191 

calls, for five weeks now, but to-day I start out again." 

" Mar. 5, 1907. 

" Fr. Henneman went down to Belize last week, to 
give a Lenten mission there, so I am alone again for 
another five or six weeks. 

''. . . We have been gradually fixing up things about 
our shack, and have now a real, civilized stove, with an 
oven, under a little shelter just outside our house. 
The natives don't know what to make of the strange 
thing, and come from miles around to look at it, and 
will not believe that that funny affair can cook things. 
We have a Carib boy whom we are training to cook, 
though as yet we do most of the practising at it our- 
selves. 

" I should like if you or Mamie would write out a 
full set of directions how to make the good old home- 
made bread, the proportions of everything used, and 
how to get it to raise, etc. — also for pancakes. . . . 

" Excuse my haste, but I am really tired and have 
not yet finished my Breviary, and must do it before 
midnight." 

" Belize, May 16, 1907. 

** Just a line before I get back into the bush. After 
a long spell in the bush, visiting various scattered 
native settlements, I got within a day's ride of Belize. 
So I have run in to rest my horse for a day or two, 
and have the pleasure of seeing the Fathers here. 

" To-morrow morning I am oflF again for the wilds, 
and expect to reach home, that is, Benque Viejo, along 
in the beginning of June. This year I am doing my 
rounds on horseback entirely. In my saddle-bags I 
carry all the necessaries for Mass, and a change of 



192 WILLIAM STANTON 

clothes, and trust to Providence for the rest. ... I 
have been very fortunate this trip so far, and have not 
been obliged to sleep in the jungle a single night, 
though I came mighty near doing so one night. 

" I am getting pretty well acquainted with my dis- 
trict by this time, and can usually make my way with- 
out the trouble of guides, who often give great bother 
and delay. I go from village to village, staying such 
time as may be necessary, to instruct the natives, ad- 
minister the sacraments, and do what I can for them. 
I carry my hammock with me — usually would have 
no place to sleep otherwise, as their huts are so poor, 
crowded, and filthy. But the grace of God is begin- 
ning to work in the souls of some of my flock, and the 
journey, though full of material inconveniences, is full 
also of spiritual consolation for me." 

" Belize, May 26, 1907. 

" Here I am still. ... I was about to start up coun- 
try last week, as I planned, but on getting up in the 
morning of the day fixed upon I found to my surprise 
I was a little out of sorts. I tried to say Mass, but 
had to leave the altar without doing so — found I had 
chills, fever, and a badly inflamed leg. The doctor 
was called, and he ordered me to bed — said the fever 
was caused by the leg, and the bad leg caused by riding. 
I had been a good many days in the saddle since I left 
Benque, but was apparently as good as new, till this 
thing came on suddenly, all in one night, it seems. 

" Thanks to the Lord and the doctor's skillful treat- 
ment, everything is all right again, and I am oflf in the 
morning. It will probably be two or three weeks be- 
for I get back to Benque. ... Of course, since I left 



EL PADRE BUENO 193 

there I have received no mail, and shan't hear anything 
of the outside world till I get back in the middle of 
next month. . . . 

" Take care of yourself. Hope you will be able to 
repeat your visit to the sea-shore frequently. I don't 
think there is any exercise better than good sea-bath- 
ing. When home at Benque I take my regular plunge 
in the Mopan. But on my trips it is different. On 
my way down I was glad enough to find a place to sling 
up my hammock and snatch a few hours sleep with my 
boots on, just as I was. In these Indian villages 
privacy is unknown, and usually the open woods as a 
sleeping place are preferable to the filthy cabins of the 
natives, filled with fleas and all sorts of vermin. But 
such is the life of the missionary in these barbarous 
places, and thanks be to the Lord, He has given me 
plenty of health and strength to stand it. 

" The Rains are just beginning, and I expect a good 
tough time of it in getting back, with plenty of work 
ahead. Don't forget to pray that the Lord may bless 
my work, for all the success must come from above. 
. . . The first bananas I planted are now bearing, and 
I expect to start in on my vegetable garden again as 
soon as I return." 

" Benque Viejo, July 16, 1907. 

"Just twenty years ago to-day since the Lord al- 
lowed me to be enrolled amongst the sons of St. 
Ignatius. I can hardly realize the time that has 
passed. . . . Time goes quickly when one is busy. 

** I have just returned to Benque, and though some- 
what sore in the bones, shall be all right in a couple of 
days. In trying to make one stretch, from a place 
called Orange Walk, where I had been for the First 



194 WILLIAM STANTON 

Friday, to the Cayo, a distance of about forty miles, I 
managed to get a late start and was caught by the 
night when about half way. I had been soaking wet 
all day, with nothing to eat but a cup of coffee and a 
biscuit in the morning, and had been in the saddle all 
day ; and finally it was so dark, and still raining, and I 
was so tired at midnight, that I had to dismount beside 
a little creek and throw myself on the wet ground just 
as I was, until I had light enough to see the road 
again. 

*' During the night my horse slipped his halter and 
made back toward his home, and morning found me 
alone, wet, tired, fasting from the morning before, with 
a pair of saddle-bags weighing close on to fifty pounds, 
and about ten miles from any human being. There 
was nothing to do but to shoulder those bags and make 
through the mud for the Cayo. I arrived there in 
about five hours, and confess I could not have gone 
much further. . . . 

" As it was Sunday morning, I managed to get a 
change of clothes and succeeded in saying Mass; but 
for two days I was not able to mount a horse to get 
back home. I am better now, and the aches are get- 
ting out of my bones. . . . We are in the midst of the 
Rains now, and travelling through the forest trails at 
this time is not exactly a picnic. But it's God's work, 
and what more profitable can we be engaged in ! " 

It is curious to see, in a letter of just a week 
later, a brief resume of this last trip, without so 
much as a reference to the rather trying experience 
he has just recounted. Little things of that sort 



EL PADRE BUENO 195 

were so common in his life that they scarcely called 
his attention, unless he happened to be writing just 
after they had occurred. He sums up the period 
covered by the last three letters, in this cheerful, 
nonchalant way: 

" Benque Vie jo, July 24, 1907. 

" Well, thank God I got back safe and sound to 
Benque, after thirty-two days in the bush. About 
three hundred and fifty miles I made on horseback. I 
learned considerably more this trip about the bush 
and about the various trails they call roads here. We 
had to cut our way through sometimes, but of course 
we had our machetes by our sides and were all ready 
for it. I generally managed to make some human 
habitation by nightfall, but my boy and I lost our- 
selves several times and had to sleep in the forest. I 
am quite used to this by this time. My boy was afraid 
of tigers and snakes, but we came through all the way 
without even seeing a tiger. 

*' The riding and swimming of the animals across 
rivers was pretty rough work, and I was laid up a few 
days with a bad leg, but nothing serious happened, and 
I am back again safe and fixing up my vegetable garden 
for the coming year. 

" The Rains have begun, and a few days before my 
arrival they had a terrific storm, accompanied by hail- 
stones as big as pigeons' eggs ! No one here had ever 
seen the like before. Our mud house is pretty well 
battered down, as you may imagine, but mud plaster is 
cheap here. You would laugh to see the plasterers 
filling up the chinks again with their hands — the only 
trowels they know of. . . ." 



196 WILLIAM STANTON 

Then he goes on to talk enthusiastically about his 
"agricultural school," and begs a few bulbs and 
seeds; he is going to try to grow flowers for the 
altar. He says of his people in general : 

". . . It is awful work to get them to Mass and 
confession and communion. They care for only two 
sacraments, baptism, and confirmation, and these they 
don't neglect if they have the chance. But confession, 
communion, and matrimony, they seem awfully afraid 
of, though they imagine they are great Catholics. . . ." 

Now and then his aunt got a letter, of which the 
following is a fair sample : 

"... A few days ago, whilst I was away in the 
bush, a letter came here for me, which I am told was 
from San Antonio, and which I suppose came from 
you or Mamie. When I got home, we searched high 
and low, but the letter is not to be found. Whether it 
was carried off by the wind, or eaten by a goat, or was 
swept up by our Carib boy, is more than I know. But 
I want to let you know, so that if there was anything 
important in the letter, you might tell me again." 

Well, in such a household, naturally anything 
might happen. His aunt and sister were as patient 
with him as he was with his Indians. Then, of 
course, he was ever and anon writing letters which 
he forgot to mail, or to address. But he got over 
that in time, by writing only after he had made 



EL PADRE BUENO 197 

sure of his arrangements for getting the letter off. 
He had been in Benque nearly two years now, 
and in that time had only twice been back even to 
such civilization as Belize offered; once in the 
August of 1906, when he had gone for his annual 
retreat and to go through the ceremony of taking 
his final grade in the Society as a Spiritual Co- 
adjutor; the second time, about a year after, when 
his loneliness seized the chance of a forced march 
to ride in for a day's chat. The life was beginning 
to tell on both himself and his companion. Malaria 
attacked the latter, and forced him to go to Belize 
to see a doctor. Fr. Stanton bore the heavier 
burden, and in time even his vigorous, wiry con- 
stitution weakened under it. He writes from 
Benque Vie jo, on August 16, 1907: 

". . . Many thanks for your dear kindness. ... I 
answer at once because I shall not have a chance to 
write again for a month or more as I must get off 
again for another round through the bush. . . . 

'* For the past month I have been alone here, as Fr. 
Henneman had to go down to Belize to see the doctor. 
At the same time the Lord wished to give me a little 
taste of sickness and knock some of the vanity out of 

me. The very day Fr. H left me, I was taken 

down rather badly with a curious mixture, chills, 
vomiting, dysentery, and fever, all at once. In about 
eight days it left me, but left me without any strength. 



198 WILLIAM STANTON 

But I have been pulling together gradually, and now 
I am all O.K. and as good as new. A little sickness 
is a mighty good thing, to teach us how great a bless- 
ing perfect health is and how grateful we ought to be 
for it. 

'' I expect it is dry enough in your part of the world 
now, but we are in the midst of the Rains. We have 
heavy rains every day, but often they pass quickly, 
and the hot sun comes out right after, and the whole 
earth is steaming with moisture. Words can give no 
idea of our trials at this time. But a good part of 
this trip I shall try to make by dorey on the river. 
The Bishop is coming up soon to visit some of the 
towns along the river, and I must prepare some of my 
Indians for confirmation. . . . The ignorance, super- 
stition, and vice amongst them is almost incredible. 
But gradually grace will triumph over these obstacles. 

" Owing to my little spell of sickness, my vegetable 
garden has run wild a little, but the last few days I 
and the boys have been cleaning it up, and we are get- 
ting some nice radishes, egg-plant, cucumbers, and 
green beans, with other things coming. Thank you, by 
the way, for the flower seeds. ... I shall try this 
year to grow some flowers for the church. 

" As these people make no fences, and have their 
hogs inside and outside their houses, rooting all around, 
you do not find anything planted near the town or in 
it. Their corn patches they plant from three to eight 
miles away in the bush, so that the hogs will not harm 

them. Fr. H and I have put a good fence all 

around our place. And we did every bit of it our- 
selves, as the men here are too lazy to work. . . ." 



EL PADRE BUENO 199 

In October he went to Belize for his yearly re- 
treat, and remained there two weeks in all. Writ- 
ing from there, he announces his purpose to remain 
at Benque Vie jo, after his return, until Christmas. 
He had been very steadily on the move during most 
of the rains, and he determined to rest a month or 
two, and not set out on his rounds again until the 
dry season had begun. We shall see how he kept 
his resolve. 

Of course, he could not just journey straight to 
Benque Vie jo. He must make use of the op- 
portunity to do a little work on the way. He 
writes from a village up the river, on October 22 : 

" Here I am, bound up inactive for several days, 
unable to move out of the house ; and as I have pen and 
paper (for a wonder !), I find it a good time to scratch 
off a few words to the dear ones at home. 

" I started from Belize for Benque just a week ago, 
on a little launch which is now running up the river 
to the Cayo. It took three days to reach Orange Walk, 
where I wanted to stop off for a day or two to visit 
this settlement of negroes, Spanish Indians, and 
Mayas. We have the League established here, and a 
school with over sixty children, taught by one of my 
old pupils of Belize. . . . 

*' Either Fr. H or I visit the place once a month, 

and get about fifty or sixty confessions and com- 
munions. But this time we are in the midst of the 



200 WILLIAM STANTON 

Rains. I arrived in the middle of a downpour, and 
had great fun climbing the slippery bank, over sixty 
feet up from the river. It has been raining almost 
continually ever since, and everything is flooded knee- 
deep in water and mud. In spite of the very bad 
weather, I had from thirty to forty persons at Mass 
every day, and so far have had twenty confessions and 
communions, and one baptism. 

" The houses, about forty in number, are scattered 
along the high bank of the river, on the edge of the 
forest. I am sleeping in a deserted bush house, with 
the rain coming down everywhere in it, except just in 
the corner where I have my hammock slung. Last 
night a swarm of red ants, that sting very hotly, 
swarmed into the house and covered everything, getting 
in a few dozen bites on my hands and feet and neck, 
before I could get out of the way and climb on to some 
old boards lying in a corner, where I passed the rest 
of the night in peace. . . ." 

He asks his sister for some shirts, and apologizes 
for asking. Then he adds a postscript, dated from 
the Cayo, on the day following: 

" I am back now as far as the Cayo, arriving at 1 130 
this morning. Everything flooded with mud and 
water. Pouring rain. I must get a horse and get out 
to Benque to-day, as I hear Fr. Henneman is not well 
and is anxiously awaiting my return. Ten miles more 
to make, and over a terrible road through the bush, 
with the horse up to his belly in mud and water most of 
the time. But with the Lord's help I hope to be safe at 



EL PADRE BUENO 201 

home before night. I must be off immediately, so 
good-bye for the present and God bless you all." 

He wrote no more than that he was " inactive for 
a couple of days." The fact is that he was laid 
up with a high fever, and that it was a very sick 
man who set out on those " ten miles more.'' The 
District Commissioner begged him to stay with him, 
but he would not listen. His partner was in need ; 
he had to get to him; the ride would shake the 
fever out of him, he laughingly asserted. He 
stumbled into Benque at nightfall, reeling in the 
saddle. He turned in to nurse his companion, who 
was too sick to notice that his nurse was stagger- 
ing with fever. But he was well almost as soon 
as the other, such was his astonishing vitality, and 
in less than a week was off on the journey of which 
he gives his account in the following letter home : 

" Benque Viejo, November 6, 1907. 
" I have just returned safely from one of the 
dirtiest trips I have yet made. It was a visit to three 
different Indian towns hidden away in the deep bush. 
I have been away only a week, having made some hun- 
dred and sixty miles on horseback, the whole of it 
through dense jungle, where the mid-day sun scarcely 
penetrates, my poor beast plowing through sticky mud 
and tangled roots, usually sinking above his knees, 
whilst the rider, machete in hand, had to chop and cut 



202 WILLIAM STANTON 

through the mass of rank vegetation and hanging lianas 
that very often completely closed the so-called road, 
which is nothing but a narrow Indian trail. 

" After travelling thus for a whole day, one comes 
to the collection of miserable huts forming the village, 
and wonders why any human beings should choose to 
live in such a place. But the Indian does not like to 
be bothered by the white man or by the negroes of the 
Colony, and looks for such out-of-the-way places far 
from any other town. There he plants his little 
* milpa ' or corn patch, hunts the wild animals, and 
lives as his ancestors did thousands of years ago. 

" These Indians of Yaalbaac, Chorro, and San Jose 
are all nominally Catholics, but are almost entirely 
ignorant of the teachings of the church and full of all 
sorts of strange superstitions and pagan practices. 
They have their little bush church, where one finds the 
altar made of little saplings and sticks, sometimes 
covered over with clay and whitewashed. There are 
always a number of wooden crosses on it, dressed in 
rags and ribbons of various colours, and sometimes a 
picture of the saints, or coloured advertisements, pla- 
cards such as Schlitz' Beer, Reuter's Soap, or Hen- 
nessy's Brandy, before which the poor creatures burn 
candles made from the wax of the wild bee, and in- 
cense which they get from the trees of the forest. 

" I gathered them together for some instructions, 
so far as my time would permit ; had rosary and other 
prayers in the evening, and celebrated Mass, etc. The 
babies were brought to be baptized, and a number of 
marriages were arranged for my next visit. 

" But the man is now calling for the mail. So I 
must conclude. Love to each and every one. 



EL PADRE BUENO 203 

" It is still the Rains, and travelling is awful. But I 
don't contemplate any more trips till after Christmas, 
as there is a great deal to do in Benque — getting the 
children ready for the end of school, their entertain- 
ment, getting up a drama too for the young men and 
girls, etc. . . ." 

He did stay home in Benque then for a couple of 
months, barring, of course, sick calls and the like. 
He made use of the time to give a new impetus to 
his " agricultural college,'' as he called it, which was 
almost always in need of a new impulse, but which 
eventually did a great deal of good. Life even 
" at home " was anything but idle. He writes on 
November 25 : 

". . . The Indians and Peteneros are certainly the 
most miserable Indians I have yet had to deal with. 
They are far below the Filipinos in civilization, and so 
lazy that so long as there is a handful of corn in the 
house you could not get them to move a finger for love 
or money. ■ In a country so rich that the soil will grow 
anything if you only tickle the surface of it, they are 
half starving during the few months of the year when 
the corn is scarce. . . . 

" We are trying however to train the children, and 
in the evenings I take the boys in the last hour of 
school and teach them gardening. To each boy I give 
a plot or two of ground, show him how to clean and 
cultivate it and grow various useful vegetables. Our 
school garden is now quite a wonder, and the children 



204 WILLIAM STANTON 

have already gathered and learned to eat their radishes, 
cabbages, tomatoes, etc. This is why I need fresh 
seeds from time to time. 

" We have just started a new church in one of my 
stations. It is going to be a very fancy one, actually 
built of boards, with a corrugated iron roof shipped up 
the river from Belize. All the other churches in our 
district are only of mud and sticks, with thatch roof, 
just Hke our house. . . . 

" I have just been run out of the house for a while 
by what we call the ' marching army.' These are large, 
black, shining ants, that hunt in huge columns several 
feet wide and sometimes several hundred yards long. 
They stop at nothing, and clean up all insects and 
smaller animals that come in their path. . . . The dog 
is attacked, and is yelping and running about like mad. 
. . . They swarmed up my feet and legs before I knew 
it, and they bite with a grip like a bulldog's, never 
letting go till you simply pull them to pieces, and even 
then often the jaws stay locked in your skin. The 
only thing to do is to clear out and wait till they pass, 
which usually takes from about fifteen minutes to a 
half hour. They are pretty good visitors (that is, if 
you yourself are not caught by them!) as they clean 
out every cockroach, scorpion, centipede, and other 
insect in the house. When they come, we simply leave 
everything open and get out of the way till they have 
finished and pass. . . . 

" They have left the house, but I hear my boys in the 
kitchen jumping and squealing, so I see they are in- 
vestigating things out there. . . . Now I hear them at 
the little chickens. . . . 

" Just saved the little chicks, but we had a lively time 



EL PADRE BUENO 205 

of it, with Fr. Henneman and myself and the two house 
boys hopping about Hke crazy men — 10:30 p.m. — the 
ground alive with the vicious insects, climbing all over 
us — but we saved the chicks. 

'* So you see there is no want of variety in our life, 
even if we are in the jungle. . . . 

*' Excuse blots — hard to keep still — no time to 
write over again." 

But he is never too busy to write home, and he 
finds time even for special letters now and then to 
his little niece and nephew. The little thatched 
hut of the hard-riding missionary has a place for 
kindly tokens of home. He tells the seven year old 
nephew : 

" When any of the little fellows of our town come 
into my house they like to look at your picture which 
hangs on the mud wall of our ' parlor,' and they say : 
* Mira, mira, que muchachito tan Undo ! Es el sobri- 
nito del Padre Guillermo, se llama Joseito ! ' You get 
Marie to translate this for you; she knows Span- 
ish. . . ." 

The beginning of 1908 saw him off on his rounds 
again. There had been a great deal of sickness in 
the district, which kept him more than ordinarily 
hard at work, both as priest and doctor. On his 
second long round, in March, he writes home: 

". . . Thank God, Fr. H and I have so far been 



2o6 WILLIAM STANTON 

preserved. I am nursing a lame left arm and shoulder, 
from a sudden fall my horse had on the road a few 
days ago. I came down under him, striking my left 
shoulder first, but it is only a bruise, nothing broken, 
and it will be all right in a few days. My health is 
simply splendid. 

" Almost forgot to tell you of my first attempt at 
making preserves. It was a great success — 'Papaya 
preserves.' The fruit I grew in my own garden, and 
I made the preserves all myself. Don't laugh! I in- 
tended to send you a sample, but had no time to pack 
it before I left Benque. I'll send you some of my 
next experiment. . . ." 

But lame shoulder and all — and it v^as a very 
lame shoulder indeed — he pushed on, making a 
more thorough visitation of his district. It was 
the dry season now, and the country was more pass- 
able; But of that tropical country, perhaps we 
might remark here that the loveliness attributed to 
it by northern fancy exists only in rare instances; 
though some of these are wonderful enough. In 
general, tropical scenery^ is decidedly ugly and more 
than a little oppressive. Open country of any sort 
is quite the exception; the rule being a dense, rank 
riot of vegetation impenetrable to the eye as it is 
to passage for travel. The view is always narrow, 
and always the same; a matted wall of bushes, 
vines, tree trunks, with little variety of colour. 



EL PADRE BUENO 207 

The rank odour of ever-decaying vegetation fills the 
air. One moves as if in a steaming, reeking prison 
of dull green. Except at the end of the dry season, 
soggy swamps abound, even in the high uplands ; the 
home of caymans and snakes. It is a dreary, silent 
land, heavy, sodden, lonely ; a more frightful desert 
because of its wild exuberance of listless sleepy life. 
It is a brave, bright spirit indeed that can live for 
years in it without being weighed down by its mas- 
sive heaviness, its solitary gloom. Those who 
know the country must marvel always at the cheer- 
fulness of the missionaries, and should at least sus- 
pect that the source of that cheerfulness was not 
merely human. 

And lest we should imagine that Fr. Stanton's 
cheerfulness was only assumed in order to quiet 
possible apprehensions of his family, here is a letter 
written on this tour of his stations to a Father in 
Belize, an intimate friend, a fellow-missionary, 
with whom he may assuredly speak plainly : 

" San Jose, Wayoutnowhere, 
" St. Patrick's Day in the Mornin', 1908. 
'* Mil saludes from the depths of the bush on this 
glorious * day we celebrate.' My Indians are firing 
off bombs, loud enough for St. Patrick to hear in 
heaven, though they had never heard of the shamrock 
before to-day. I don't mean to say the racket is for 



2o8 WILLIAM STANTON 

Erin's patron saint; it's all for el Senor San Jose — 
Mr. St. Joseph. 

" We are in the midst of the novena. But it is not 
all shooting. The days are pretty full, instructing the 
grown-ups singly and together, teaching prayers, cate- 
chism, and singing to the children, trying to regulate a 
few crooked unions, studying the ways and customs of 
the untutored Indian, and working away at Maya. So 
the days of the novena pass. I began the confessions 
last night. Everything in Maya — and I am still alive 
and kicking. 

" But if ever I see civilized life again, or get to 
Belize in this life, please don't show me anything that 
even looks like a chicken on the table. My digestive 
apparatus is still in the ring ; though if it survives the 
present strain of tortilla and chicken swimming in hog- 
grease three times a day for ten days at a stretch, I 
think it will deserve a gold medal. 

" Friday, the 20th, I intend to be off for Holotonich, 
the limit of my stamping-ground in this direction. 
From there I shall run up to Orange Walk, New River 
— think I can make it in three days. I have a good 
reason, to steal a bottle of Mass wine from the Padres 
there, for the single bottle I brought with me from 
the Cayo will have been spent. I hope you got my 
letter and have sent some wine to Benque, where only 
two bottles remained when I left. And don't forget 
to send me a bottle to Orange Walk, Old River, in care 
of Broster, to await my arrival there, as otherwise I 
shall have no Mass for the rest of the trip up the river. 

" After saying Hello to the Padres at O. W., New 
River, I have to get back to Holotonich, and from 
there strike across country to the Old River — ought 



EL PADRE BUENO 209 

to make it in five days — hoping to come out at Satur- 
day Creek, or near Coquericot. . . . 

" At O. W., Old River, I may have to stay a week 
or so, to see if I can't get them started on their new 
church. From there I work up through S. Francisco, 
etc., to the Cayo, hoping to get back to Benque in time 
for Holy Week. 

" I left Benque three weeks ago, and have not, of 

course, heard of Fr. H since. I hope he is all 

right, though the grippe or dengue or whatever you 
call the blamed thing was prevalent there then. . . . 

" Don't know when this will reach you, as I don't 
know when I shall be able to get it to the nearest post- 
office. But I trust in the end you will get it, and in 
case you hear no news of me in the next six months, 
kindly send out an expedition to discover Spot's bones, 
which ought to be plainly visible somewhere in the 
district. Poor old horse ! he deserves Christian burial ; 
he does most of the work. 

" P. S. March 26. Robert Wade Bank, 

near Holotonich. 

"Didn't get my epistle off to you yet. Meantime 
the world moves, I tave taken my little run to see 

M and N ; found K too at Orange 

Walk. . . . 

" I reached here at 2 :oo a.m., pretty tired. Am re- 
maining till to-morrow for a marriage and a number of 
confessions and communions. To-morrow early I 
strike over from Holotonich to the Belize River, hop- 
ing to come out near Banana Bank. . . . Tell ' el 
Padre viejo ' I have several scores to settle with him, 
if I ever meet him in the flesh. . . ." 



2IO WILLIAM STANTON 

Fr. Stanton got through to the Belize River, but 
poor old Spot did not; he bogged down hopelessly 
in the mud in the midst of the jungle, leagues away 
from help. Fr. Stanton rescued his saddle and 
saddle-bags, and sent on the one old Indian who 
accompanied him, to borrow a horse from a good 
Protestant friend, whose ranch was only half a 
day's ride distant. 

It may be mentioned here that in their regard for 
Fr. Stanton, there was no distinction between 
Catholic and Protestant in the Colony. The 
Protestant planters along the river always wel- 
comed him with delight; their houses were open 
to him at any time of day or night. Their purses 
were open too. But he had a delicacy about ask- 
ing them to help out his churches, and for him- 
self and his house he never begged ; in fact, he saw 
no reason for begging in behalf of the latter; he had 
everything he needed, he said. His sister and aunt 
supplied him with everything he asked for his 
church and mission. 

This was his third year at Benque Viejo, and his 
steady, patient work with the Indians was beginning 
to tell ; they were frequenting the sacraments more, 
and attending Mass. It meant more to him than 



EL PADRE BUENO 211 

anything else could mean. God's work was suc- 
ceeding. Of course, he gave all the credit to God, 
but he was very happy himself to be God's instru- 
ment in it all. He had been content to plant and 
water, leaving the reaping to others when he had 
gone. It was delightful that even in his own time 
the harvest should begin to whiten. These begin- 
nings of success heartened him wonderfully, gave 
him new brightness and courage. He did not need 
a rest ; the work was rest for him now. So he said, 
and thought; and drove on with new vigour. But 
it was puzzling to him that attacks of sickness 
seemed to come with greater frequency ; it does not 
occur to him, apparently, that he was using up even 
his superb vitality. In a letter written home after 
his last long round of forty days, he says, quite in- 
cidentally : 

". . . My health is splendid, thank God. Here at 
Benque, however, on Palm Sunday I suddenly got an 
attack in my right leg, just as I did in the middle of 
my May trip last year, and I was laid up with it all 

Holy Week. As I was alone, Fr. H having gone 

to the Cayo for Holy Week, the poor Benque people 
had to do without some of their principal processions 
and ceremonies, as I only managed to crawl down to 
the church the last few days of the week, to perform 



212 WILLIAM STANTON 

the most necessary functions as best I could under the 
circumstances. Thank God, the leg is all right again, 
and I am able to be around as usual. 

" Work at home has been piling up whilst I was 
gone. I hardly know where to begin. . . ." 

Sickness did not fret him or make him impatient. 
It was a bore, of course, as it kept him from his 
work. But beyond that, it was merely puzzling. 
Why, he never used to get sick! Every letter is 
sure to have in it somewhere, ** My health is 
splendid ; '' even though it went on to say that he 
was out four days with fever. And when he was 
" out," he was really sick ; trifling ailments he 
simply disregarded. As we shall see, it was not 
long before he had more and more reason to be 
puzzled. In the meantime, he kept on with his 
work. 

Woods and rivers had their treacheries too, as 
well as their weariness. He rarely speaks of ac- 
cidents, though there were many of them in his 
toilsome days. At most, he says in his letters from 
time to time, " We came through without any 
serious accidents." When he does mention some 
mischance, it is merely as something curious and 
interesting; often enough, as a thing to chuckle 
over; it is his old balance, and sanity, and humour. 
Take this letter, for instance: 



EL PADRE BUENO 213 

" El Cayo, May 19, 1908. 
" My dearest Sister : 

** Pardon this paper, but I am at El Cayo to-day and 
have a chance to send off mail and have no paper at 
hand. . . . 

" My health is splendid, thank God. I have just 
returned from another trip — had a narrow escape 
from being crushed to death by a tree that crashed 
down suddenly across the road, just touching my 
horse's head as I reined him up. A second more, and 
I would have been under it. I was alone, it was night, 
and quite in the midst of the forest. But my guardian 
angel was at my side, watching, and evidently my time 
had not yet come, anyhow. 

" On the way back, my horse was somewhat knocked 
up, and night caught me in the bush, where I slept 
soundly till daylight. . . . Next morning, my poor 
horse bogged in the mud and with great difficulty I 
managed to get him out, both of us completely plas- 
tered with mud from head to foot. I told him I hoped 
I didn't look as foolish as he did. 

" As it * never rains but it pours,' my shoes went to 
pieces (they were pretty old, anyway) from the mud 
and water; the horse was so weak he could hardly 
move; so I had to foot it, driving the horse slowly 
before me with the saddle-bags, till I reached the Cayo, 
a distance of about twenty miles. I got here pretty 
foot-sore and tired, but, thank God, in splendid condi- 
tion otherwise. 

" You see, we don't travel in Pullman coaches or 
automobiles down here; but we don't need them for 
saving souls, and the missioner is probably just as 



214 WILLIAM STANTON 

happy without them. I realize more and more how 
many things there are in civiHzed Hfe as we Hve it in 
the States, which we look upon as necessities, but 
which are really only luxuries, as one finds out in Ufe 
like this. . . ." 

He was down with fever again in June, but he 
evidently forgot it ; for when he wrote to his sister 
on June 30, he starts off with the old refrain: 

". . . As for myself, I am in first class health, as 

usual. Fr. H has been working up the Cayo 

town for the past month, and I have Benque all to 
myself. Thanks be to God, the devotion to the Sacred 
Heart is beginning to take hold in the town, and 
whereas last year we succeeded in getting only about 
forty persons to the sacraments for their Easter duties, 
this year I had over two hundred communions during 
the month of June alone, whilst we have from seventy 
to a hundred every month. It is awful up-hill work, 
but God is bound to triumph. Pray hard for these 
poor ignorant long-neglected souls confided to my 
care. . . ." 

Things are going fine at Benque. He has built 
a chickenhouse, cleared a pasture, put up more 
fences, enlarged the garden. It is hard to get a 
cook, but then " fortunately both Fr. H. and I have 
very good stomachs, and we get along where a per- 
son used to regular, well-cooked meals might be 
knocked out." There is mention, for the first 



EL PADRE BUENO 215 

time, of a projected new house. A couple of years, 
or rather a couple of Rains, is a fair life for a bush 
house. The new house came, nearly two years 
later, but he never lived in it. Then follows a 
paragraph in the same letter, which I shall quote 
without comment; this is not a sketch of the Stan- 
ton family. Besides, no comment is really neces- 
sary. He continues : 

". . . You speak of your plan of coming down here, 
when the children are grown, etc., to look after my ma- 
terial wants and comforts, if God spares us all so many 
years. Well, my dear, that would of course be fine, 
for me ; but for you it would need a special vocation 
from the Lord, for Benque and its surroundings is not 
a place where a civilized white woman would care to 
pass any length of time. . . ." 

That generous plan might have been carried out, 
" if God had spared them so many years " ; but 
the years before him were few. The letter in which 
he rejected her offer is blurred and blotted. 

A month later, he went again to Belize for his 
retreat. It was delightful, he writes, to meet some 
of his ** own people " again, to live for a few weeks 
in a real house. Then back to his work, and the 
old round over again. In his next round of the 
pueblos, undertaken as soon as he got " home," oc- 



2i6 WILLIAM STANTON 

curred a little incident to which he refers jokingly 
in one of his letters, as an instance of how even 
the knack of swimming may come in usefully. The 
facts, as supplemented by Fr. Henneman, were not 
precisely a joke. 

It was the Rains. He had gone to visit a village 
called San Antonio, lying out of the path of his 
usual rounds. On his way he crossed the river at 
a ford, where he had crossed dozens of times be- 
fore. When he came to the ford on his return 
from San Antonio, the river was higher, the cur- 
rent stronger. His horse was swept off his feet. 
Fr. Stanton slipped out of the saddle and swam 
beside the horse as he had often to do when cross- 
ing rivers. Some quarter of a mile below there 
was a dangerous fall in the river. But horse and 
rider both managed to reach the bank a hundred 
yards above the fall. Fr. Stanton caught hold of 
a branch to pull himself out of the stream. The 
branch broke and came down atop of him. He 
dived out of the way, but when he came up saw that 
the current was carrying him on to the fall. It 
was hopeless to try to get back again to the bank; 
the current was too strong; so with a prayer to his 
guardian angel he struck out for the deepest water, 
and went over the fall. Some Indians in a dorey, 



EL PADRE BUENO '217 

hugging the bank below to come as close as they 
might to the fall before making the portage, saw 
the bearded white man come over the roaring 
tumble of water, and dropped their paddles in 
terror, crying out that it was " un brujo," a wizard, 
a spirit! But the "brujo" came safely through, 
and with long, powerful strokes cut in a great 
slant across the current and reached the bank. He 
was encumbered with clothing, boots, machete, shot- 
bag — though he lost his boots in the fall. He 
waved a hand cheerily to the Indians, and started 
to cut a path with his machete through the bush, 
travelling back along the bank. Somehow or other 
his horse had succeeded in landing, and he found 
the animal waiting for him above the fall. The real 
annoyance, he wrote, was that " everything inside 
and outside of my saddle-bags was completely 
soaked. But in a few hours I reached the Cayo, 
where the D. C. kindly lent me a complete change 
of clothes, and I spread all my trappings out in the 
sun to dry." 

The letter goes on with the usual " Thank God, 
my health keeps splendid ! " But Fr. Henneman is 
not at all well. Indeed, before long he had to give 
up Benque for good. After another couple of 
months alone, Fr. Stanton received a new comrade 



2i8 WILLIAM STANTON 

in his place, the Reverend Arthur Versavel, SJ., 
who is still working away in Benque Vie jo. 

Naturally, the letters of these years contain many 
little interesting jottings about the Indians and 
their customs, the tropical country, its plants, insects, 
animals. He had not lost his quick eye for observ- 
ing. But of such things perhaps we had better 
speak in another chapter. 



CHAPTER XIII 

A great deal might be written of Fr. Stanton's 
scientific work even during these hard years of toil 
as a missionary in Honduras. But if we rank that 
work as he ranked it, in comparison with his duty 
as a priest, we may be very brief indeed. When 
he came back to the mission, he came to work for 
souls. Nothing is more certain than that that was 
his engrossing interest for the rest of his life. He 
grudged any jot of time or energy that might be 
taken from it. Yet the scientific habits of nearly 
a lifetime could not be wholly ignored. He simply 
could not help '* observing/' and there were occa- 
sional moments along the jungle paths or in the 
swamps when he forgot everything but the interest- 
ing phenomena at hand. 

Of what we may call his practical science, of his 
" agricultural college," his experiments with useful 
plants, vegetables, fruits, flowers, to which, partly 
as a matter of immediate necessity, partly as an in- 
direct effort in the training of his people, he gave 
a great deal of his time in Benque Vie jo, there is 

219 



220 WILLIAM STANTON 

no need to say much. They deservedly attracted 
some attention in the Colony, and in the end were 
of considerable real benefit to his people. Various 
attempts have since been made to imitate his teach- 
ing in several parts of the Colony. It is an obvious 
part of the civilizing of the Indians. 

His interest in more speculative sciences was 
wide-spread. Anthropology, archaeology, ento- 
mology, botany, natural history in every branch, all 
had an attraction for him. For those who knew 
him, he often brought to mind Coleridge's 

" He prayeth best who loveth best 
All things both great and small : 
For the dear God Who loveth us 
He made and loveth all." 

There was always a touch of the humorous, the 
affectionate, in his keen observation of bird and 
beast and insect. No amount of accurate knowl- 
edge ever dulled the swift, boyish wonder of his 
mind. And no marvel of structure or organization 
or instinct but brought him on directly to thought 
of " the dear God . . . Who made and loveth all." 
For such faith as his. Nature was indeed an open 
book, but an open prayer-book. 

Don't fancy a grotesque, dreaming missionary- 



THE SCIENTIST 221 

naturalist, with a bible in one hand and a magnify- 
ing glass in the other — the staple butt of humor- 
ists. Fr. Stanton was infinitely removed from that. 
He was decidedly a sturdy, vigorous, four-square 
man, with a most masculine directness of character 
and purpose and accomplishment. Without any 
swagger or bluster, he might have ridden in a troop 
of " The Rough Riders " and been at home. Re- 
ligion, faith, were a flame in his heart; not a badge 
on his sleeve, nor a frothy sentiment in his mouth. 
One could as readily fancy him flying through the 
air as fancy him prosing piously over a flower or 
a bird. If his thought was coloured by the creative 
vision that faith gives, his speech, with the well- 
chewed pipe-stem in his teeth, was coloured mainly 
by humour — which, after all, is not such a bad 
expression of faith. He saw God in all the world, 
not as a mystic sees Him, but as any real Christian 
may see Him; and he spoke of Him with the ret- 
icences which convention (foolish or not) has put 
upon a gentleman. , 

Perhaps he knew as much about the Maya and 
Lacandon Indians as any man of his time, not of 
their blood, could know. He might have written 
a very interesting volume on them. But he studied 
them primarily as their very level-headed pastor, 



222 WILLIAM STANTON 

that he might know how to make Christianity a 
more actual and vital thing for them. Folk-lore, 
traditions, customs, their immediate ways of life — 
he was steeped in them. He had no time to dig up 
Maya ruins and inscriptions, but he knew all of 
them that had already been unearthed in his dis- 
trict. He took pictures of them, gathered notes 
for a lecture on them. 

He knew most of the immense variety of trees 
and plants that surrounded him, their habits, their 
uses as food or medicine, their conditions of 
growth, so far as observation and the knowl- 
edge possessed by the Indians could inform him. 
Though he never went out of his way to study these 
things, nor ever for an hour neglected his real work 
for them, neither did he let pass the thousands of 
incidental opportunities for picking up information. 
He studied only as he rode or tramped or paddled, 
but he studied extremely well. 

It was living things, as always, that interested 
him most. He not merely kept up, he improved, 
his acquaintance with snakes, insects, beasts of the 
forest. Every journey through the bush gave him 
new information, and often specimens. He had a 
few books, good ones; and he pored over them 
and his specimens at night, when his day's work 



THE SCIENTIST 223 

was done and his people were all snug in their 
beds. Nor, hidden away though he was in the 
bush, could he drop out of the world of science that 
had begun to know him. His correspondence was 
considerable. And though he might find no little 
difficulty in getting any sort of box in which to ship 
his specimens to the Smithsonian Institution or to 
scientific friends, his sister saw to it that at least 
he had neatly engraved cards to accompany them. 

A ride with him through the bush would delight 
any live man. He seemed to see everything. His 
quick eyes caught, as he rode along, a thousand in- 
teresting incidents of animal or insect life. The 
woods were not dull to him, or to any one with 
him. 

Once, when he was caught by night in the bush, 
and his horse left him during the night, and he had 
to trudge bare- foot through the dawn some twenty 
miles, fasting, wet, in the rain, with fifty pounds 
of saddle and saddle-bags on his shoulders, he saw 
on the way a good-sized wowlah, or boa, gorging 
down a big frog. He was very tired, he had not 
eaten for more than twenty-four hours, he had a 
good deal of fever; but he put his load down and 
stood by to watch the snake. The old fellow, as 
he said, was mighty slow about it. He could not 



224 WILLIAM STANTON 

wait. So he caught up the snake, frog and all, and 
staggered on. He got into the Cayo at seven 
o'clock, had the church bell rung, and threw him- 
self down for a few minutes' rest. The fever was 
much worse. The District Commissioner heard the 
bells, and said to his wife : " One of the Fathers 
must have come, and we shall have Mass." They 
found the Father a very sick man, tried to persuade 
him that he ought to eat something, ought not to 
say Mass. But the Father was able to get up laugh- 
ingly and insist on saying Mass. " Why, it's Sun- 
day ! " he said. And he told them about the snake, 
which he had tied to his saddle. Then he said 
Mass, though at the end he could scarcely stand. 
The D. C. said, " What an enthusiastic naturalist ! '* 
His wife said, " What a zealous priest ! " We 
might almost let the story of Fr. Stanton as a 
scientist rest here; the two sayings give you the 
heart of the matter. 

But there are no end of stories about him and 
his snakes. He was as great a " snake doctor '* to 
the Indians of Benque Viejo and the District as he 
had formerly been to the Creoles and Caribs. 
Often, if they came across a big snake near the 
town, or near wherever he chanced to be, instead 



THE SCIENTIST 225 

of killing it, they ran to tell him, so that if he 
wished, he might capture it alive. 

He came into his garden at Benque Viejo one 
day, holding by the tail a- very angry snake, so 
long that with uplifted arm he could just keep its 
head off the ground. He called out to Fr. Henne- 
man, " Get one of those cleft sticks, and catch 
his head!'' "Is he poisonous?" Fr. Henne- 
man asked repeatedly; but Fr. Stanton merely 
kept telling him to get a stick and hold down its 
head. When they had secured the snake, and Fr. 
Stanton was examining its jaws, Fr. Henneman 
again asked, " Is he poisonous ? " And this time 
he got an answer, given with a grin — " Why, 
that's just what I wanted to see! . . . Yes, he is! " 

With snakes he was particularly fearless, though 
he seemed never to be much bothered by fear of 
anything, for that matter. He gave one the im- 
pression of being quite familiar and on easy terms 
with most beasts. Now and then he got paid out 
for his familiarity. He was riding, one day, along 
a bush-path, when he met an ant-bear. The animal 
sat up in the path, undaunted, and faced him. He 
dismounted, eyed the chap a while, and decided to 
bring him home alive that he might study his ways. 



226 WILLIAM STANTON 

The little ant-bear, which is about four feet long, 
with a great, bushy tail more than half as long as 
its body, reared like a real bear, claws out. Fr. 
Stanton sparred with him, as if boxing, then with 
a quick lunge caught the beast's tail and swung him 
dangling in the air. With his free hand he drew 
his machete, and struck the ant-bear a smart blow 
on the head with the flat of the blade, and stunned 
him. Then he put him in the empty corn-sack and 
fastened him securely to the cantle of the saddle. 
Old Spot, his horse, made no objection whatever. 
He mounted, let the reins drop on Spot's neck, got 
out his breviary and began to read his office as 
^^ jogged along. Suddenly Spot screamed, and 
reared almost straight in the air, and pranced about 
on two legs. With a great deal of difficulty, caught 
as he was between saddle-bags behind and rifle in 
front of him, Fr. Stanton managed to dismount; 
and with even more difficulty succeeded in calming 
Spot a little — wondering all the while what had 
got into the steady old animal. Of course, Mr. 
Ant-bear had waked up, and he had got into old 
Spot. Reluctantly, Fr. Stanton had to kill the little 
beast, and postpone his study of live ant-bears to a 
more favourable occasion. 

One scarcely need be told that a good " ob- 



THE SCIENTIST 227 

server " must be well endowed with patience. Fr. 
Stanton^s equipment in that respect was quite ex- 
traordinary. Not merely had he the quiet necessary 
to watch details carefully, and the persistence to be 
always on the look-out for opportunities of in- 
vestigation; he had that genuine "possessing of 
one's soul *' which is considerably more than a mere 
scientist's endurance. The interest and fascina- 
tion of the work may explain a scientist's patience 
with natural processes. But it takes, one may 
fancy, a little more than scientific interest to keep 
one patient when the natural processes are unmis- 
takably at one's own expense. 

In the course of his accumulation of wealth at 
Benque Vie jo, Fr. Stanton became the proud owner 
of a chair. In no great time, the so-called white 
ants, the termites, took over the possession of that 
chair in their own quiet way. Without any fuss or 
ostentation, working away, as they always do, un- 
noticed in the central core of the wood, they quietly 
ate out everything of a few legs of the chair ex- 
cept the paint. The resultant collapse of the chair 
really called for rather more than scientific patience. 
But Fr. Stanton gathered himself up from the floor, 
and without even a naughty word, but with many 
chuckles instead, examined their craftsmanship, so 



228 WILLIAM STANTON 

to speak, in the most eager spirit of a scientific ob- 
server. It was quite the same when the "wee- 
wees," an extremely ravenous sort of ant, ate up 
the better part of a tiger skin which he was curing 
to send home; ^ or when the same " wee- wees " in 
one night destroyed some fruit trees that he had 
planted and was watching anxiously as an experi- 
ment. He had taken particular pains to guard these 
trees, and as a special protection against " wee- 
wees " had put a thick ring of pine-pitch around 
the trunk of each tree. He saw them green and 
flourishing on one evening, and woke to find them 
utterly stripped of leaves in the morning. The 
ants had decided that those trees were about ready 
for them, and had come in numbers to the feast. 
The rings of pitch delayed them hardly at all. Ant 
number one went up and stuck himself in the pitch, 
ant number two climbed over him and stuck be- 
yond; a score of ants made a bridge; the bridges 
too were scores ; and the army passed over without 
further trouble. Fr. Stanton was a great deal more 
delighted over the cleverness of the " wee-wees " 
than he was distressed over the loss of his trees. 
But I am afraid we are running off the scientific 

^He had shot the tiger, or jaguar, just outside his house, 
where the beast had come prowling. Rather eloquent of the 
intimacy between Benque Viejo and the jungle! 



THE SCIENTIST 229 

track altogether on this line of thought. It could 
hardly be science which made him take so cheerfully 
the uninvited visit of a neighbour's bull, who came 
one day in his absence and ate every living thing in 
his hard-won garden. Fr. Stanton was naturally a 
high-tempered man, but he only grinned when he 
came home to his desolate vegetable patch, and lit a 
fresh pipe and said, " Well, I guess he needed it. 
There isn't much decent pasturage around Benque." 
No, he did not abandon his scientific interest; it 
remained ; but in the years it had got covered up by 
a much nobler growth. In the missionary, it could 
only peep out here and there. He did, indeed, look 
forward to the possibility of doing something more 
in that line, when his mission work had been well 
established and the field of work for souls better 
manned. In the meantime, the only rather serious 
work of a scientific sort that he could find time and 
energy for was the completion of his notes begun 
years before. This he could do, and did, at night, 
in his little thatched hut. Laboriously, carefully, 
he wove them into a book ; two volumes, on " The 
Fauna of British Honduras." It was a very ac- 
curate book, but popular in style, written for the 
general public as well as for scientists. It was com- 
pleted, ready for the printer, but it was never 



230 'WILLIAM STANTON 

printed. It was merely lost. That is all we can 
say of it. 

Perhaps only one thing more need be mentioned 
in this brief chapter : his notable generosity in shar- 
ing with others the results of his work in science. 
He had very little indeed of the vanity which we 
may suppose scientists, in common with other men, 
to possess. None of his work was done to gain 
praise; though he accepted the encouragement of 
praise when it came, as simply as a child. Pro- 
vided the work was done, it mattered very little to 
him who got the credit for it. His collections, 
notes, and the like, he placed freely at the disposal 
of any one who asked his assistance. Of this many 
instances might be specified. 

But in reality the scientific days were done when 
he returned to British Honduras. It might seem 
as if God had accepted with a strangely complete 
literalness the sacrifice he had made in relinquishing 
his splendid opportunities for entomological and 
other scientific work in Manila. He came as God's 
knight to the mission, on a chivalrous quest for 
souls. It was as if at the touch of the accolade all 
lesser distinctions fell from him. Souls God gave 
him ; He gave him a fine part in His own work ; per- 
haps part of the price to be paid for that was even 



THE SCIENTIST 231 

the very odd loss of his scientific book. Perhaps 
God wished that the memory of Fr. Stanton, with 
us who knew him, should be supremely that of a 
priest : a clean fierce flame, in which there was not 
even the colouring of earthly matter. 



CHAPTER XIV 

The year 1908 swung on to its close, with the 
usual round of quiet work. His new comrade, Fr. 
Versavel, not yet quite acclimatized, had to go down 
to Belize for about a month, leaving him alone dur- 
ing the Christmas season. In his letter home for 
Christmas he mentions this illness of his compnaion 
with sympathy, and rather marvels a little that he 
himself has been so wonderfully favoured in the 
matter of health. To read the letter, one would 
think that he had never had a day of illness in his 
three years at Benque Viejo. '' Thank God, who 
has given me such a vigorous constitution, I have 
been as well here, and am in as good health to-day, 
after more than three years, as I have ever been in 
my life." Of course, it is just a passing reference; 
except as matter for gratitude, the question of his 
health does not occur to him at all. 

Christmas in Benque Viejo is a busy time, but 
not very edifying. The town is full of chicleros, 
" who come in from the bush now to spend a month 
or more in beastly drunkenness until they go out 

232 



VIA DOLOROSA 233 

again to their work of bleeding the chicle trees to 
supply Americans with chewing gum.'* The ter- 
mites have been eating up everything but the tin- 
opener and his machete; they balk at metal only. 
He is going out on his rounds again after the holi- 
days. It is a tired letter, cheerful enough, but 
rather dull; but he does not say he is tired. Just 
keep on praying for his work; that is the main 
thing ; that comes back again and again. 

His rounds took him all the way to San Jose. 
When he returned in February, he wrote that it had 
been " a stiff trip, soaking wet nearly all the time — 
had to swim across a swift river with boots and 
clothes on — all day in the saddle, wet — caught 
one night in the jungle, in a swamp, pitch dark, 
knee deep in mud, raining all the time. The horse 
could not get a step further. So both of us, plas- 
tered with mud and drenched from above, passed 
the long night till daylight showed where we were. 
Clouds of mosquitos and swarms of fiery ants had 
taken their fill of me, whilst the blood-sucking vam- 
pire bats had tapped my poor horse. We got out 
all right, and I had the consolation of being told 
by the first Indian I met that three big tigers 
(jaguars) had been killed near by during the last 
month. ... I shall be going the same round again 



234 WILLIAM STANTON 

next month, but then the trails will be better, as the 
dry season is beginning. . . . Sunday is the 28th — 
thirty-nine years old ! Just to think ! I can hardly 
realize it. It does not seem so long since we used 
to have the candy-pullings on that day. . . ." 

And he goes on cheerfully with his plans. He is 
going to raise ducks, Indian Runners, if they will 
send him some eggs! Can it be done? Would 
they survive in the post? But there is something 
wanting in the letter. He does not say, " My 
health, thank God, is splendid ! '' It is significant. 
Indeed, he will never say it again. The nearest he 
can get to it will be one rather feeble, '"'' Otherwise 
my health is splendid." Not that he complains, not 
yet. He admitted to one or two who noted his 
rather drawn look that he was not feeling very well. 
But, of course, it is nothing serious; it would be 
ridiculous to mention it in a letter. 

He set out in March on another long journey. It 
was in the dry season. Travelling should have 
been easier. But somehow, it did not seem to be. 
He had no opportunity to write during that time; 
but he told the writer, in a puzzled way, that that 
particular San Jose trip seemed to bristle with diffi- 
culties. He got lost rather badly a few times. 
Once he had to chop a path with his machete for 



VIA DOLOROSA 235 

four or five hours, going ahead and leading his 
horse; and the tangle of bush that they went 
through rubbed off his blanket and shot-bag from 
the saddle; his breviary and knife and pipe and 
tobacco were in the shot-bag. He had to sleep out 
in the bush a couple of nights. The commissary 
department was unusually inefficient. In addition, 
he " did not feel very well." In fact, he believed he 
must have rheumatism, because he had dreadful 
pains in his back. 

That last was a first hint. Of course, he said it 
with the old grin, and joked about it. It was im- 
possible for any one to take alarm at the matter, the 
way he put it. It was, he made one feel, just an- 
other bit of the humour of the bush; part of the 
good-natured " cussedness " of things, which so 
often sees to it that " it never rains but it pours.'* 
One scarcely thought to ask him if the pains still 
continued. He did look rather wretched — but 
then, he had been working very hard. 

He got back to Benque Vie jo in the beginning 
of April. His companion had returned from Be- 
lize. There was a third Father in the District now, 
with headquarters at the Cayo. He was delighted. 
Everything was going splendidly. The District 
was really beginning to round into shape. They 



236 WILLIAM STANTON 

would do wonders now, the three of them. In the 
meantime, he must get at that garden and pasture 
again. The weeds were getting up. It was hard 
to keep things going when one had to be away in 
the bush so much of the time. Besides, a Httle 
work would do his rheumatism good. Yes, he still 
had a little pain in his back. Then, suddenly, on 
April 13, 1909, comes this note to home, scrawled 
in pencil: 

". . . Just at present I am on the flat of my back in 
bed, with an attack of something, apparently acute 
articular rheumatism. The seat of the trouble seems 
to be pretty well down the spine, at the articulations of 
the hip bones. Though I had felt some pain and sore- 
ness before, about ten days ago it struck me fiercely 
whilst I was bending down to bind some plants in the 
pasture. The shooting pain was unbearable. I simply 
squirmed on the ground and screeched like a wild In- 
dian till it passed. It took me about fifteen minutes, 
with great pain and difficulty, to get to my feet. I got 
to the house, where I have been since, unable to do 
anything. There is no doctor here, of course, but we 
have sent word to Belize to the medico there and shall 
get some advice by next week's mail. 

" Thank God, the thing is improving slowly, and with 
great care I can move a bit in bed without getting an- 
other attack. I trust that in a few days more I can 
get to my feet and be about. Otherwise I am in splen- 
did health — no fever. 

". . . For over three years and a half, working in 



VIA DOLOROSA 237 

these jungles, I have had perfect health, so I can't 
complain when the Lord sends me some little pain to 
remind me I am human. 

" I am getting tired trying to write on my back, so 
must say good-bye for a while. Pray that the Lord 
may put me on my feet quickly and give me strength 
to work many years more for His glory. . . ." 

How much torture there was in those last few 
expeditions through the bush, one may fairly guess 
from this simple letter. If he said little or nothing 
about it before, it was from no petty vanity, it was 
not out of the braggadocio with which strong men 
often mask any physical weakness. He was in this, 
as in all things, most simple and honest. Any 
swaggering assumption of callousness or indiffer- 
ence was impossible to a man of his character and 
humour. He merely did not think much of pain or 
discomfort, did not dwell upon it in his own mind, 
and never let it affect at all the resolute working of 
his will. That was why he kept silent concerning 
his pain and distress. When they forced his atten- 
tion unmistakably, and 'he realized that this was no 
common discomfort of his hard life, then he spoke 
out plainly. There is a world of humility in the 
man who writes simply that he " squirmed on the 
ground and screeched like a wild Indian " with 
pain. 



238 WILLIAM STANTON 

The advice came from the doctor in Belize " by 
the next week's mail," and was, of course, a sensible 
order for Fr. Stanton to come down to Belize at 
once and put himself in his liands. But there was 
so much to do. Besides, he had to begin plans for 
his new house ; which was much needed. Then, this 
was the dry season; no launch could get up the 
river; he must go on horseback or in a dorey. 
Anyway, his back really was better. Perhaps it all 
came from the Rains. But his superior added his 
urging to that of the doctor, and six weeks later, 
at the end of May he went down, on horseback. It 
took him four days, but he had to sleep in the bush 
only once on the way ; and that under circumstances 
that amused him. He had hoped to make the ranch 
of a good Protestant friend before nightfall. But 
night caught him still at some distance, he could not 
tell just how far, from the place. He was in con- 
siderable pain, which may have muddled his wits. 
Suddenly he heard through the night the loud bray 
of an ass belonging to his friend's ranch. Obvi- 
ously, he was near the place. But in which direc- 
tion ? The jungle makes it hard to locate the source 
of sounds. Was he on the right side of the river? 
Was he near the river, or away from it ? He could 
not settle how to go ; so he did what is, in the cir- 




FATHER STANTON, BELIZE, IQOQ 



VIA DOLOROSA 239 

cumstances, the most sensible thing to do in the 
bush: he unsaddled his horse and lay down where 
he was. Morning showed him his friend's place 
just across the river from where he had passed the 
night. A hail would have brought a boat and 
lights. '* There we were," he said, " a braying ass 
on one side of the river, and a bray-less ass on the 
other; and we couldn't get together ! '' 

No one took his illness very seriously; least of 
all did he. Rheumatism was the common lay ver- 
dict. The doctor made another guess. In the 
meantime, Fr. Stanton was resting by pushing on 
his plans and preparations for his new house. On 
June 4, 1909, he wrote to his aunt: 

" Just a line to-day, to reassure you about my health. 
I am all right again, the pain in my back almost entirely 
gone — as you may easily imagine, since I have just 
come down from Benque to Belize on horseback, a 
four days' ride, to see the doctor. On examination he 
told me immediately what was the matter: injury of the 
main sciatic nerve from the pressure of a rather dilapi- 
dated truss that I have been wearing. In a few days 
more I shall be as good as new again. 

*' I am busy working out plans, etc., for a civilized 
house at Benque. It is going to be a big job, but I 
hope to finish it this year. The main timbers I have 
already got out of the forest, but most of the rest of 
the material will have to be transported from 
Belize. . . ." 



240 WILLIAM STANTON 

He remained in Belize four or five weeks. The 
doctor was rather baffled by his case. He needed 
an X-ray examination to make certain how his spine 
was affected ; and Belize did not possess a Roentgen 
apparatus. Fr. Stanton insisted he was feeling 
better ; the thing, whatever it was, would pass away ; 
he must get back to his mission and his new house. 
The new house was a real venture; but Mother 
Katharine Drexel had come to his aid with a 
generous donation; and his relatives, and friends, 
in the States and in Belize, contributed more. He 
did very little begging — a task for which he had no 
liking, of course. Nor did he need to beg much; 
those who knew him were glad to help him; and 
with his usual nonchalance in money matters he was 
perfectly content to trust Providence to any extent. 
He had laid out his orders for material by the end 
of June, and he was eager to get back home. On 
July 4, he wrote to one of his comrades in the Cayo 
District : 

". . . My back is all right, that is, it scarcely bothers 
me at all now. All it needs is a Httle rest, which it is 
getting to its full satisfaction here in Belize, much to 
the Doc's satisfaction too. I can't easily stand a pit- 
pan trip of eight days just at present, but if you fellows 
don't pray for high water up the river, I'm afraid I 
shall have to make a break for the bush in pitpan, 



VIA DOLOROSA 241 

dorey, or ' walk-foot/ For I will not hang around 
here more than a week longer at the most. 

*' You must be hard up for provisions by this time. 
If something doesn't turn up within a very few days, I 
shall try to shove something along by pitpan if possible 
and run the risks. . . . 

'' Just met Willie Stewart at Melhado's, and he tells 
me The Cutter is going to try to get up this week. If 
so, I think Fr. Wallace and I shall try to get passage. 

'' But it is breakfast hour in Belize now — I cannot 
give you any more definite arrangements, as the mail 
is about to close. . . ." 

Evidently, the men up country did not pray hard 
enough. The Rains had begun, but the river rose 
very slowly. No launch would venture as yet into 
its upper reaches. It might be a week, it might be 
two weeks or more, before the flood would be high 
enough for that. So the Superior of the mission 
and Fr. Stanton loaded a pitpan with tinned pro- 
visions, flour, etc., and set out on the journey. 

The only way to understand the discomfort of a 
long voyage in a pitpan is to make such a voyage. 
Fancy a flat-bottomed craft, fashioned of two great 
logs hollowed out and joined together ; some thirty 
to forty feet long, three to four feet wide; square- 
ended, of very shallow draft, the bottom sloping 
up at bow and stern so as to glide smoothly over 
the water. It is loaded amidships with a huge pile 



242 WILLIAM STANTON 

of goods, leaving only a small space forward for 
the paddlers and a still smaller space at the stern 
for the luckless passengers. Its high load makes it 
crank; capsizes are distressingly common. One 
must sit quietly, as the craft lurches and staggers 
up against the current. There is scarcely room for 
one to change position. Standing or moving about 
is utterly out of the question. In the rapid shallows 
the crew stand up to pole; in the swifter, narrow 
reaches of the river, where the water tumbles and 
boils amongst the rocks, they must take a line ahead, 
make it fast to a tree on the bank, and drag the pit- 
pan slowly forward. It is in such places that 
cargoes are lost. Let the current catch them but a 
moment broadside on, and over goes the pitpan. 

Eight weary days of this they had before they 
reached the Cayo. They had no awning; the sun 
beat down upon them, the sudden, torrential rains 
drenched them. Seven nights they slept in the pit- 
pan, cramped, without room enough to stretch out; 
only one night they got ashore and slept in an 
abandoned hut. Their food gave out, mysteriously 
enough, for they had put sufficient rations aboard 
at starting. The crew mutinied. They had to 
beg provisions from little planters along the 
river. 



VIA DOLOROSA 243 

Fr. Stanton bore the journey badly. The pain in 
his back grew worse, as he had to admit to his com- 
panion. But he did not complain. He joked about 
it, he kept wonderfully cheerful. If a sharper 
spasm brought a groan to his lips, the groan ended 
in a grinning burlesque. He would be all right as 
soon as they got out of that blooming Pullman. He 
was going right into his garden the moment they got 
to Benque, and he was not going to sit down for a 
month. The old back needed exercise, that was all ; 
a daily dose of hoe and machete. 

They had not dared to open any of their boxes of 
provisions during the journey — for fear they might 
disappear altogether. The danger of capsizing was 
not at any time the only risk goods ran in transit by 
pitpan. When they reached the Cayo, they ar- 
ranged for mules to carry their goods to Benque 
Vie jo. But even between the Cayo and Benque 
there might be strange vanishings. A note of July 
20, to the Father at the Cayo, is typical of a score of 
notes on similar occasions : 

". . . Feliciano says you looked for milk amongst 
my goods and could not find any. I myself saw 
amongst my boxes at Chindo's at least one case of 
evaporated milk. I didn't open the box to see if there 
was actually anything in it, but it looked all right, and 



244 WILLIAM STANTON 

it is on the bill. If you can't find it, try to buy a few 
tins of any kind of milk to bring out with you when you 
come Friday, as we have run out entirely. . . ." 

The pain in his back never left him, but now it 
was not so intense, and besides, as he said, he was 
getting used to it. His notes and letters of the next 
few months make no mention of it at all. He is 
busy with plans for his house, with getting his gar- 
den into shape again, with the routine of work 
amongst his people. In the beginning of September 
he even gets up a party, at the request of the Dis- 
trict Commissioner, to inspect some Maya ruins 
near by. 

The Government had lately appointed a surgeon 
for the Caya District, a young Englishman who 
promptly became a close friend of Fr. Stanton, and 
of course gave him his professional services. He 
could not make sure of his ailment, with the limited 
facilities at his command, and from the start he 
urged him to go to the States for more adequate ex- 
amination and treatment. But Fr. Stanton pooh- 
poohed that idea. There was nothing seriously 
wrong, he was sure. And then, there was so much 
work to do. It was simply impossible even to think 
of leaving Benque. His companion remonstrated 
with him for working so hard — and to his astonish- 



VIA DOLOROSA 245 

ment, was sharply rebuked. It was the only time 
Fr. Stanton had even momentarily lost his temper 
with one of his comrades. But his companion did 
not misunderstand; he saw in the fact only a new 
symptom of the now ancient ailment. The man's 
nerves were showing the strain of long months of 
suffering. He was tough and enduring, he would 
not give up, but the pain was cornering him. 

In the second week of September he had to go to 
the Cayo on business. It was during the Rains, and 
of course the road was in its usual horrible condi- 
tion. His horse could not carry him through the 
mud, and he had to dismount and flounder along 
behind, holding to the horse's tail. A week later 
he writes to the Father at the Cayo : 

" I have been all knocked out since Sunday. . . . 
Only a little malaria, says the Doctor, and I am nearly 
over it now. It's * el mal que anda.' Doc says I must 
keep quiet for a few days more — hard thing — and 
I'm filling up with quinine. 

'* I got out safely last week, at just 9 :oo p.m. Old 
Brownie led the way in the dark, and with a good grip 
at the end of his tail I was guided slowly along the 
road. . . ." 

That is all he has to say about himself. The note 
goes on with directions about some goods that are 
expected from Belize, messages about some plants 



246 WILLIAM STANTON 

he is to get from a man at the Cayo, about lumber 
for the new house, and the Hke. His hurried notes 
home do not even mention his illness. Only on 
October 6, in a brief apology for not writing more, 
does he refer to the matter at all : 

". . . Am still alone, and extremely busy. Besides, 
have been somewhat unwell for the past month, but 
nothing serious. Am feeling somewhat better these 
days. Plenty of trouble trying to build a house back 
here in the bush. 

" Hope to be myself next week, and shall write more 
details of my work. Love to all." 

In the meantime his superior in Belize had written 
him to come down and see the doctor there again; 
he was worried about him. But Fr. Stanton was 
unable to make the journey until the middle of Octo- 
ber. Then he went down on horseback, and nearly 
collapsed when he reached Belize. Still his courage 
and cheerfulness deceived every one. It was im- 
possible to believe that there was anything seriously 
the matter. The doctor was as puzzled as the Cayo 
surgeon had been. Lacking an X-ray examination, 
his various diagnoses were only guesses in the dark. 
The one obvious thing was that Fr. Stanton was in 
constant pain, and that his wiry strength was wear- 
ing down. The doctor again urged a voyage back 



VIA DOLOROSA 247 

to the States. But the new house at Benque was 
actually begun; he couldn't go now. He remained 
only a week in Belize, more occupied and concerned 
even then with business affairs than with the doctor's 
conjectures as to what ailed him. The day before 
his return, he wrote a long letter to his sister, full 
of talk about the new house, in the course of which 
he says: 

**. . . To tell the truth, I have not had quite my 
usual strength and health since last March, but thank 
God, I believe I am all right again now. My great 
trouble now is worry about the building of our new 
house. . . . 

". . . It is late, and I must be packing my saddle- 
bags to start early in the morning on my journey back 
to the bush. I shall probably reach Benque by next 
Sunday. . . ." 

The writer rode out with him a bit on his way 
back, and saw his face twisted with pain. But he 
said it was no great matter, and chatted cheerfully, 
and made plans for a great exploring expedition 
that they two would undertake when the dry season 
came again. With three priests now in the Cayo 
District, he thought he could get off for a few weeks 
to have a look through the unexplored hinterland of 
the Colony. He had hopes of finding open country, 
good pasturage, perhaps lakes, in that no-man's 



248 WILLIAM STANTON 

land. They would carry a transit-compass, perhaps 
gather data for a future railroad. They would map 
the country. By that time he surely would be quite 
strong again. They parted, and he rode on between 
the tangle of mangrove with his hand at his back 
and a little unsteady in the saddle. 

The man's pluck was indomitable. Four days' 
ride brought him to Benque. He stayed a few days, 
to attend to his people there ; then he set off. Rains 
and all, on the round of his pueblos. He had been 
reproaching himself, when in Belize, for having 
neglected them so long. Hearing him talk, one 
would think it had been only preoccupation with his 
new house that had kept him away from his other 
work. Apparently, the fact that he had been unwell 
never entered his mind as an excuse. How dreary 
was that long journey to the sick man, we may only 
conjecture. We have no details of it. It lasted 
about a month. It was in the worst season of the 
year. On December 2, 1909, he writes to his aunt: 

** I am just back from one of my trips amongst the 
smaller Indian villages of the district, and am some- 
what tired out, but it is mail day and if I don't write 
to-day I may not be able to get off any Christmas letter. 
Let me begin by wishing you and all the family a 
Merry Christmas and a New Year filled with the 
choicest blessings of the new-born Babe of Bethlehem. 



VIA DOLOROSA 249 

" How time does fly ! More than four years have 
passed since I came back here into the wilds of the 
Cayo bush, and still I am alive and well, and still able 
to work — thanks to the good God who has protected 
me from a thousand dangers of body and soul. . . . 

That is the tone of the whole letter, a marvelling 
gratitude. There have been difficulties, but God 
brought himself and his companions through them. 
He praises the courage and generosity of his com- 
panions. God has been so good to them all. 

". . . Pray for us," he concludes, " That the Lord 
may give us strength and zeal to work hard for His 
glory and the salvation of the poor souls buried in these 
wildernesses. The difficulties are great, but the Lord 
is greater than all. . . ." 

Not a word about ill-health. Not even any good- 
humoured chat about the last trip. He is " some- 
what tired out," that is all. Well, he was more 
" tired out " than he knew. It was his last round 
of the mission stations. 

On December 14 he wrote a very jolly letter to 
Belize. He is still enthusiastic about that exploring 
expedition for the next dry season. He is sending 
down " a fine skin of a tigrillo, shot just outside our 
fence; also a skin of a large boa-constrictor. We 
are just lying in wait these nights for another 



250 WILLIAM STANTON 

tigrillo, that carried off three hens and a chick the 
other night from our next-door neighbour. . . ." 
After more small talk about affairs in Benque, and 
the new house, the letter concludes : 

". . . Perhaps I shall bring those skins down my- 
self. ... It seems I am doomed for another trip to 
Belize — doctor's orders. There seem to be a few 
screws still loose in my spinal column, and Doc says 
there is no monkey wrench in Benque that can tighten 
them up. He prescribes at least ten hours a day 
stretched on the flat of my back — just think! Well, 
I am on the flat of my back at the present moment, and 
this must serve as excuse for this horrible scrib- 
ble. . . r 

But he actually got up on Christmas day, and said 
Mass for his people. It cost him great effort; the 
pain was intense; he could get through only one 
Mass. His companion found him afterward in 
their hut, with tears in his eyes that he could not say 
his three Masses on Christmas day. The next day 
he wrote to his aunt : 

'* Just a line to let you know I am alive and that I 
received your Christmas letter. . . . 

" As for myself, I must confess that I am stretched 
on the flat of my back at present. The doctor of the 
District has examined me several times, and says that 
a couple of segments of my spinal column have rotated 



VIA DOLOROSA 251 

out of their normal position and that there appears to 
be a renal tumour in my left side. This can only be 
determined, he says, by thorough examination under 
the X-rays — which cannot be done in the colony. 

" At any rate, I am going to try to get down to 
Belize this week, and see what Fr. Superior and the 
doctors in Belize have to say about the case. The doc- 
tor here has prescribed that in the meantime I keep 
stretched straight out on my back on a hard bed, as 
much as possible. So here I am. We shall see what 
the Lord has in store for me now — perhaps a few 
weeks' rest in Belize, perhaps a journey to St. Louis, 
or at least as far as New Orleans — who knows ! 

" After I get to Belize, I shall let you know any 
news. To lie about doing nothing is very hard ; but I 
should not complain. My hand is tired, writing in my 
peculiar position; so with a Happy New Year to all 
the dear ones, I shall say good-bye for a while. . . ." 

He came down to Belize, though the journey was 
torture. The doctors consulted and debated and 
examined, and could not come to any certain con- 
clusion, beyond that he must go at once to the 
States. A new superior had just come from St. 
Louis to replace the former superior. It was de- 
t:ided that Fr. Stanton should accompany the latter 
home. The mail steamer had no room for them. 
They booked passage on a tramp bound for Mobile, 
to sail on January 6. He had no clothes save the 
rough khaki and flannels that he wore in the bush, 



252 WILLIAM STANTON 

and we had to lend him a collection of garments. 
He made a joke of trading his gun for a coat with 
one of us, and so on. The day before they left 
Belize, he wrote his last note to the Father who was 
to be in charge of the District in his place, turning 
over to him with cheerful heartiness his plans and 
his responsibilities. He was in great pain, but he 
wrote gaily as ever : 

" Well, old man, I am off for a while. The doctors 
have ordered me to the States by the first steamer, say 
I should go right up to St. Louis, where they can rip 
me up without any difficulty and haul out of my 
anatomy some sort of cyst, which the Doc says prob- 
ably entered by means of infected marana. He says I 
may be able to return in about a month. Dies 
quiera! . . ." 

It is no discredit to the doctors in Belize, con- 
sidering the circumstances, to say that they did not 
know what they were talking about ; but they did not 
know. The man's body was ringed with a mon- 
strous growth of cancer ; and he was not to return in 
a month ; he was never to return. 



CHAPTER XV 

This is the last chapter : let us go through with it 
swiftly: it is a painful chapter, of the dragging tor- 
tures of one dying of sarcoma. Yet one is tempted, 
too, to delay upon it, for the sake of the superhuman 
courage, the heart-breaking gaiety and brightness 
with which Fr. Stanton went through these last 
terrible months. 

He and Fr. Wallace sailed from Belize on Friday, 
January 6. The steamer was small, with meagre 
accommodations for passengers. They struck ab- 
normally rough weather in the Gulf, bucking their 
way through a savage north-easter. Fr. Stanton 
was in constant and dreadful pain. Every sea-voy- 
age had always brought him a few days of sickness, 
and he dreaded it now. He begged his companion 
to pray that he might be spared that additional dis- 
tress. And pray they did, with the result that Fr. 
Wallace, usually a good sailor, was sick for two; 
Fr. Stanton escaping entirely. Their steamer came 
into Mobile five days later, her decks and masts 
coated with ice: a strange phenomenon for those 

253 



254 WILLIAM STANTON 

latitudes, and testimony sufficient of the violence of 
the storm they had weathered. 

They arrived in port at nine in the evening, with a 
prospect of having to remain aboard until morning. 
But Fr. Stanton was in such bad shape that his 
companion feared he might die, and so made vigor- 
ous efforts to rout out the collector of the port and 
get permission to go ashore at once. They stopped 
only a day in Mobile, as Fr. Stanton insisted on 
pushing on directly to St. Louis. From his bed, in 
Mobile, he wrote to his sister : 

" Mobile, Ala., Jan 12, 1910. 
" My dear little sister : 

" You are astonished to hear of me in Mobile ; but 
here I am, back for a while at least under the stars 
and stripes. I arrived here about nine o'clock last 
night, accompanied by Fr. Wallace, on the SS. Belize, 
after a very rough passage from Belize. To-night, at 
8 .-40, we take the train direct to St. Louis, and expect 
to get there Friday evening. 

** And what does it all mean ? Well, you will re- 
member what I wrote in my last letter from Benque 
Vie jo. As soon as I got down to Belize, and the doc- 
tor there had examined my case again, he told Fr. 
Superior to get me off by the first boat for the States, 
to have the operation performed which alone could 
cure me. Fr. Wallace, who had just been replaced as 
Superior of the mission by Fr. Mitchell, was packing 
up to return, so we came together. 



HOMEWARD 255 

" You and Auntie must not be frightened at this, as 
the operation which has to be performed is not very 
dangerous, and the doctor says that within a month I 
shall be out of the hospital and be as good as new 
again. They have to cut out of my side what they 
call a hydatid cyst, which seems to be the cause of my 
trouble, and when that is done the twist in my spine 
will probably right itself gradually. Pray that every- 
thing may turn out well. 

" * Man proposes, God disposes,' but as far as I know 
at present I shall probably be on my way back to 
Belize and the bush some time in February or perhaps 
March. On my return I would naturally sail from 
New Orleans. I should like of course to go round 
through San Antonio to see you all once again, but it 
is a good deal out of the way, and I don't know whether 
the poor mission can stand the extra expense after all 
the expenses of my journey and the medical and hos- 
pital bills. But there is still time to think of such 
things, and no hurry at present. 

" I shall of course write promptly after getting to 
St. Louis, and let you know how I am getting along. 

*' I feel half frozen to death here in Mobile after my 
years in the tropical bush. St. Louis must be much 
colder. But the doctor says I shall recuperate from 
the operation much easier up in St. Louis than further 
south. . . ." 

There is not a word about the pain he was suffer- 
ing. Indeed, all who dealt with him during that 
long time of torture brought away an imperishable 
memory of his patience and positive cheerfulness. 



256 WILLIAM STANTON 

The jolting of the railway carriage added to his 
pain during the weary night and day to St. Louis. 
But when his companion, eager for some means of 
distracting him, introduced to him a chance ac- 
quaintance on the train, a Jew engaged in entomo- 
logical work for one of the Government bureaus, Fr. 
Stanton chatted so gaily and interestingly for two 
hours that the man could scarcely believe that he 
was ill. But he was very ill indeed. Reaching St. 
Louis almost in collapse, he was driven to the Uni- 
versity. The next day he was taken to St. John's 
Hospital, in desperate condition. 

But with his astonishing vitality he rallied from 
the ill effects of the long journey. A week after 
his entrance into the hospital he wrote again to his 
sister, briefly recounting what had happened since 
his last letter. He continues then : 

" I wanted to write sooner, but there was no news to 
tell you. A thorough examination is being made by 
the best doctors in the city. To-day or to-morrow they 
will make an X-ray examination, after which Dr. 

E will make his diagnosis and we shall know what 

is the matter and what has to be done further. Until 
the diagnosis is made we can only keep our souls in 
patience. 

" I have every care and comfort possible here under 
the kind Sisters of Mercy and the nurses of the hos- 
pital. . . . 



HOMEWARD 257 

" I can't write long without getting tired, as the 
doctors will not let me move out of bed, so I must 
stop for the present, and await the developments of 
next week. Tell Auntie not to be disturbed. But I 
want you all to make a novena to the Blessed Virgin, 
to finish on the feast of the Presentation. This will 
probably be the most critical time for me, and the feast 
just fits in. Any little prayers, say, three Hail Marys, 
will do. If you can all say them together every day, 
so much the better. ..." 

His friends in St. Louis flocked about him. He 
showed a cheerful countenance to all, joked and 
made little of his illness. In fact, the chief physi- 
cian at the hospital said afterward that Fr. Stanton's 
steady courage actually added to the difficulty of 
diagnosing his illness properly. But some of his 
friends sent alarming reports to his family. The 
last letter he was able to write, a scrawl in pencil, 
was to encourage his sister and aunt. It was dated 
with the month only, but it must have been written 
at the end of January or the beginning of February. 

" You see I am still alive and able to scribble, so you 
need not bother about funeral arrangements yet. I 
got your letter yesterday, and am glad to see you have 
plenty of common-sense and will not allow yourself to 

be flurried by sensational notes from N or any 

one else. . . . 

** And how am I now ? Well, feeling fairly well to- 



258 WILLIAM STANTON 

day, with a fair appetite and not much pain, getting the 
best of nursing, being examined carefully and thor- 
oughly by the best specialist in St. Louis. What more 
could one desire under my circumstances? My case 
has been somewhat puzzling to the doctors, and they 
are taking all possible means to avoid any mistake; 
hence the apparent delay. Much better thus than to 
rush at a radical operation which might complicate 
matters more. 

" They have concluded not to perform any operation 
for the present, thinking the disease can be controlled 
more easily by other forms of treatment. Just what 
treatment is best they are discussing now. . . . 

" So you see, whilst the wise men are in doubt all we 
have to do is to be patient and await results. In the 
meantime, any number of nuns and convent children 
and friends are praying for me, and so we have every 
reason to hope for success. 

** Keep your soul in peace then, my dear, and tell 
Auntie not to worry. Neither of you could do a 
particle of good for me here. All you could do would 
be to visit me for a moment or two ; and a visit will be 
much more enjoyable when I meet you all in San 
Antonio some time in the not too distant future, if 
God wills. . . ." 

However, the doctors did know definitely what 
his disease was. They merely did not think it well 
to tell him. As for an operation, that was out of 
the question: there was no hope: the cancer had 
developed too far for that. By now the malignant 
tumours, spreading along the lymphatics, had filled 



HOMEWARD 259 

nearly the whole of the abdominal cavity, and were 
shortly to mount up and attack his throat. 

He had no fever, nor was he ever quite delirious. 
But as his pain and his weakness increased, his mind 
wandered. He was back once more in the bush. 
He cried out about " his boys — his poor boys ! *' 
He was labouring through the swamps, and he could 
not reach them. But at any time the name of Jesus, 
or a little aspiration, brought him back to his senses, 
smiling, cheerful, praying. 

One of his comrades praised him for his courage. 
He lifted up the crucifix, which he kept always in 
his hands, and whispered, *' It's not courage, Jim ; 
it's faith ! " Well, it was both ; the one had become 
as much part of the man as the other. 

He fought against letting his family know how 
badly he was. But toward the end of February he 
gave in. They were informed and came on to St. 
Louis at once. The end was not far now. But 
how weary the road that remained ! His pain grew. 
The tumour in his throat prevented him from taking 
nourishment; he could only hold a bit of ice in his 
mouth and let it melt. Toward the end he could 
not even receive Holy Communion. In the agony 
of thirst he thought he was in the midst of drouth 
back in Honduras. " Help me home ! " he cried. 



26o WILLIAM STANTON 

" My boys are waiting for me. There is no water 
in the town ! " 

Never did he utter a word of complaint. But he 
writhed and crawled about his bed like a stricken 
animal in dumb torment. Men turned away from 
that tortured, smiling figure, to hide their tears. 

The pain kept him from sleep. And through the 
long nights he prayed quietly, or wandered off to 
talk about his mission. " God's will be done ! " was 
always on his lips, or " Patience, Jesus, patience ! " 
Those about him now prayed for his death. But 
death held off. He was so strong that the disease 
must eat him out to the last ounce of resistance be- 
fore he could die. 

" Tell me," he asked, " Am I dying? " And they 
told him, yes. " Well, that's good. It's good to go 
home ! " And he asked his nurse to read over for 
him the prayers for the dying. He talked of God 
and of heaven as simply as might a child. He 
brought heaven into that chamber of suffering for 
those who shared it with him. 

And still death forbore. Only once he said, piti- 
fully, " I am so long a-dying ! " The ashes were 
thickening over the little flame, but how brightly the 
flame shone through them. Near the end, when his 
throat was choked so that he could scarcely whis- 



HOMEWARD 261 

per, an old friend, a fellow priest, leaned over to 
catch what he was trying to say. But the faint 
words, with a pressure of the hand, were only a 
familiar teasing exclamation, " You old fraud ! ** 

It is seven years since he died, but the details of 
that last long waiting for death are vivid still in the 
minds of those who watched with him. Never did 
he preach Christ to men as his smiling Christian 
courage preached Him then. 

The last night, he asked his nurse many times, 
" Have we much farther to go? " Not far, she told 
him, and fought with her tears because she dreaded 
that it might still be far. It was such a night as had 
been a dozen before ; when death hovered ; and one 
knew not if it would come or not. In fact he 
seemed more at ease than he had been. Only the 
nurse was with him. Let her tell of the end. 

" At eleven o'clock I gave him his medicine hypo- 
dermically, and arranged his pillows, and he slept 
fitfully. When I asked him if he would like a little 
piece of ice, he answered, yes ; but his voice sounded 
differently, and he did not talk as he usually did. 
Still his general condition seemed better, and I was 
not alarmed. The Intern came in occasionally, and 
did not notice any change. About ten minutes be- 
fore midnight, I again offered him some ice. He 



262 WILLIAM STANTON 

nodded, but did not speak. I often recall the feel- 
ing that came over me then, as if some third person 
were present in the room ; but I was not alarmed at 
all, for I knew that our dear Lord was not far away. 

" I raised his head. He did not try to help me 
with the weight as he usually did. I saw that he 
was dying. I called Dr. C , who came imme- 
diately. But his beautiful pure soul was then in the 
presence of Him Whom he had loved and served so 
well. He died without any struggle." 

It was a little before midnight, Thursday, March 
lo, 1910. He had just completed his fortieth year. 

On Saturday morning, the feast of the canoniza- 
tion of Saint Ignatius and Saint Francis Xavier, the 
rector of the University celebrated requiem Mass 
over the body; a low Mass, and no sermon, after 
the custom of the Jesuits. Then the body was taken 
to the cemetery at the Florissant noviciate, near the 
city, where Fr. Robison, his boyhood friend and 
comrade in the Society, read the last rites, and con- 
signed it to the grave. The wheel had come full 
circle; he rested where he had begun his life as a 
Jesuit. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: March 2006 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
CranbeTy Township, PA 16066 
(724) 779-21 1 1 



^4 





« * 



*'4' 



